druiden36lessons.com

https://www.druiden36lessons.com

THE HUNDRED PATHS (cantamantalo) OF PAGANISM.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

ELEMENTS OF DRUIDIC MYTHOLOGY.

Volume III

Peter DeLaCrau considers himself as the editor or as the coordinator of these texts, and not as their author. It is in fact a collective work.

Works mentioned in bibliography are used without notes, and without footnotes, in order not to unnecessarily bother the reading of a book, intended for the broadest public, and not only university.

Although not being the author having written this book, Peter DeLaCrau agrees nevertheless to assume all its defects. Remarks and suggestions therefore may be sent to him.

This booklet aims to show with precision, the harmonious authenticity of will as well as knowledge, of the today's high-knowers. To show at which point their great current theses, have ancient roots, because Mythology is our Bible for us. The adaptations of this short account, required by differences of culture, of age, of spiritual maturity, of social status, and others, will be done by the concerned high-knowers (the veledae etc.).

Celts are indeed a community of nations intended to save the world, through the contamination of its example regarding ecology (Peter DeLaCrau. Paris. January 1993).

THE HUNDRED PATHS cantamantalo)

OF PAGANISM.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY : ELEMENTS OF DRUIDIC MYTHOLOGY

Volume III

" Celts are indeed a community of nations intended to save the world, through the contamination of its example regarding ecology“ (Peter DeLaCrau. Paris. January 1993).

REVIVAL, REBIRTH AND RENAISSANCE, YES!

RESURRECTION LIKE BEFORE, NO!

"It’s by following the walking one that we find the way.”

Comparison is a fundamental mental process: grouping some facts together under common categories but also noticing differences. Such connections and relationships are the basis of thought and science. Otherwise, there are only isolated facts without links between them. It is therefore on the basis of comparison that generalizations, interpretations and theories are formed. Comparison creates new ways of viewing and organizing the world.

Comparative religion is therefore old as the hills. Herodotus was already doing it. As far as ancient religions are concerned, this intellectual approach has produced many books stored in the "comparative mythology" shelves since Max Muller (1823-1900).

As far as religions are concerned, it is quite different.

Each religion was, of course, compared to those with which it was competing but first to denigrate or affirm its superiority.

The first elements of a more objective beginning of comparative religion are currently scattered under the label of "religious dialog" and generally come from religions that define themselves as monotheistic because of their worldwide extension. The whole for an apologetic or missionary purpose, of course. Hence problems.

We also find useful reflections in circles more or less coming under atheism but they are

-either detailed but focused on a particular religion.

-or being more general but rather basic.

And, moreover, they also are most often found in the history of religions, but all in a non-religious perspective.

Great names punctuate this story from William Robertson Smith (religion of the Semites) to Mircea Eliade through Emile Durkheim.

Other authors have opened many insights in this field.

Our idea is TO LENGTHEN A CERTAIN NUMBER OF THEM BY GOING FURTHER IN THIS COMPARATIVE RELIGION (widening of the field of anthropological research, deepening of the psychological foundations, end of the overvaluation, decolonization, antiracism, new hypotheses ....) AND BY RESUMING THE INTERRUPTED THREAD OF THEIR FASCINATING QUEST FOR THE GRAIL BECAUSE ancient druidism is a little like the famous story of the grail of Perceval and Gawain.

It is an unfinished story, which stops abruptly after the first 9000 lines of verse. Our project is to write the rest of it. A continuation it was said at the time.

These small notebooks intended for future high-knowers, want to be both an imitation (a pastiche) and a parody. An imitation because they were composed in the manner of theologians (Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, etc.) at least in what they had, all, of better (elements in fact often of pagan origin). One of the functions of the imitation was always, indeed, in the popular oral literature, to answer the expectation of audiences, frustrated by the break of the original creation [in this case the druidic philosophy]. To this expectation, in the Middle Ages, the cyclic narrative technique of the epics singing the heroic deeds, or of the Romances of the Round Table, has responded.

The way of the pastiche is the one which consists in enriching the original by supplementing it with successive touches, by developing just outlined details, or by interpreting its shadows. And this, the thought of our ancestors needed well!

But the reasoned compilation, due to the hand of Peter DeLaCrau, also is in a way a parody, because it was never a question, nevertheless, for the project supervisor of this collective work, of supporting such as it was and unconditionally, the whole of these doctrines.

He wished on the contrary, by all sorts of literary means (reversal of arguments, opposing views, etc.) to bring out their often negative, harmful, alienating or obscurantist, aspects; and if this text can sometimes seem, to pay indirect homage to the capacity of reflection of the various current theological Schools, Christian, Muslim, Jewish or other, it is involuntary; because his purpose is well, to do everything, in order to wrest from their hands, the monopoly of discourses on the divinity (see on this subject the remarks of Albert Bayet), even if it means finishing discredit them definitively in the public eyes.

Except as regards the best ideas they have borrowed from paganism, of course, and which are enormous; because in this last case, it is, let us remember it once again, from the prospect supervisor

of this compilation, a readjustment to our world, of the thoughts of these theologians' apprentices ((the god of philosophers, the Ahura Mazda, the immortality of souls, the god-men, the sons of a god, the messiah Saoshyant, the Trinity, the tawaf, the sacrifices, the life after death, not to mention cherubim paradise, etc.).

In other words, not history, but historical fictions, according to the works of...see the bibliography at the end. In accordance with this, our "imitation” is only a return to our roots. In short a homage.

"Druidism" is an independent review (independent of any religious or political association) and which has only one purpose: theoretical or fundamental research about what is neo-paganism. For, as Carl Gustav Jung saw it very well, religion is only "the attentive observation of forces held to be 'powers': spirits, demons, gods, laws, ideas, and “the careful consideration and observation of certain dynamic factors, understood to be “powers,” spirits, demons, gods, laws, ideas, ideals or whatever name man has given to such factors as he has found in his world powerful, dangerous or helpful enough to be taken into careful consideration, or grand, beautiful and meaningful enough to be devoutly adored and loved” (Psychology and Religion 1937).

The double question, to which this review of theoretical studies tries to answer, could be summarized as follows:

"What could be or what should be a current neo-druidism, modern and contemporary?”

"Druidism" is a neo-pagan review, strictly neo-pagan, and heir to all genuine (that is to say non-Christian) movements which have succeeded one another for 2000 years, the indirect heir, but the heir, nevertheless!

Regarding our reference tradition or our intellectual connection, let us underline that if the "poets" of Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill still had imbas forosnai, teimn laegda and dichetal do chennaib 1) in their repertory (cf. the conclusion of the tale of the plunder of the castle of Maelmilscothach, of Urard Mac Coise, a poet who died in the 10th century), they may have been Christians for several generations. It is true that these practices (imbas forosnai, teimn ...) were formally forbidden by the Church, but who knows, there may have been accommodations similar to those of astrologers or alchemists in the Middle Ages.

Anyway our "Druidism" is also a will; the will to get closer, at the maximum, to ancient druidism, such as it was (scientifically speaking). The will also to modernize this druidism, a total return to ancient druidism being excluded (it would be anyway impossible).

Examples of modernization of this pagan druidism.

— Giving up to lay associations of the cultural side (medicine, poetry, mathematics, etc.). Principle of separation of Church and State.

— Specialization on the contrary, in Celtic, or pagan in general, spirituality history of religion, philosophy and metapsychics (known today as parapsychology).

— Use in some cases of the current vocabulary (Church, religion, baptism, and so on).

A golden mean, of course, is to be found between a total return to ancient druidism (fundamentalism) and a too revolutionary radical modernization (no longer sagum).

The Celtic PAA (pantheistic agnostic atheist) having agreed to sign jointly this small library *, of which he is only the collector, druid Hesunertus (Peter DeLaCrau), does not consider himself as the author of this collective work. But as the spokesperson for the team which composed it. For other sources of this essay on druidism, see the thanks in the bibliography.

* This little camminus is nevertheless important for young people ... from 7 to 77 years old! Mantalon siron esi.

1) Do ratath tra do Mael Milscothach iartain cech ni dobrethaigsid suide sin etir ecnaide 7 fileda 7 brithemna la taeb ogaisic a crech 7 is amlaidsin ro ordaigset do tabairt a cach ollamain ina einech 7 ina sa[ru]gad acht cotissad de imus forosnad [di]chetal do chollaib cend 7 tenm laida .i. comenclainn fri rig Temrach do acht co ti de intreide sin FINIT.

PROLOG.

“My father Níall did not allow me to accept the faith* , but bade me to be buried on the ridges of Tara. In the manner of men at war, for the pagans, armed in their tombs, have their weapons ready, until the day of erdathe, that is, the day of the Lord's judgment according to the druids” (Memoir of St. Patrick by Tirechan).

* In anything ?

Patrick went afterwards to the fountain, i.e., Clibech, on the slopes of Cruachan, at sunrise, Laeghaire’s daughters, viz., Eithne the Fair, and Feidelm the Red, went early to the fountain to wash, as they were wont to do, when they found the synod of clerics with white garments, they wondered at the appearance of the clerics, and imagined they were fir-sidhe, or phantoms. They questioned Patrick. “Whence are you, and whither have you come? Is it from the sidhe? Are you gods?”

Patrick said to them, “It would be better to believe in God than to ask regarding our race.”

The elder daughter said, “Who is God, and in what place is he, in heaven or in earth? Is it under the earth, or on the earth, or in seas, or in streams, or in hills, or in valleys? Has He sons and daughters? Has He gold and silver? Is there a profusion of every good in his kingdom?Tell us plainly how we shall see Him, and how is He to be loved, and how is He to be found. Is He young or old? Or is He everliving? Is He beautiful, or have many fostered His son, or is His daughter handsome, and dear to men of the world?”

St. Patrick, full of the Great Sacred Spirit, responded, “Our God is the God of all, the God of heaven and earth, the God of the seas and rivers, the God of the sun and moon, and all the other planets; the God of the high hills and low valleys; God over heaven, in heaven, and under heaven; and He has a mansion, i.e., heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them. He inspires all things. He quickens all things. He enkindles all things. He gives light to the sun, and to the moon.

He created fountains in the dry land, and placed dry islands in the sea, and stars to minister to the greater lights.

He has a Son, coeternal and coequal with Himself; and the Son is not younger than the Father, nor is the Father older than the Son. And the sacred Spirit breathes in them. And the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost are not divided.

I desire, moreover, to unite you to the Son of the heavenly king, for ye are daughters of an earthly king, etc.”

They received the Communion, and fell asleep in death, people placed them under covering, and in one bed and their friends made a great lamentation over them. The druids also who brought them came in order to cry , on account of the daughter, Patrick preached to them (Tripartite Life of St. Patrick part II).

The weak light of the reason is always eclipsed by the dark clouds of passions and covetousness. How to distinguish what is right from what is false in such an account, which is relevant from what is not so?

Because mind, on the one hand, leads us, of course, to spiritual knowledge but, on the other hand, it diverts us towards the concerns of this world (Mediomagos).

“ When the whims will stop biting me so that I can focus on the Truth? When my anxiety will be completely calmed? When my concerns will end? When my soul will open out in the fulness of the Big Whole (Pariollon)? When my soul will be absorbed in the universal Soul like an agitated wave calming down in the bosom of a calm sea?

When the light of the reason will disperse the dark cloud of ignorance which covers my divine essence under the veil of this pitiful shape? “

REFLECTIONS ABOUT MYTHOLOGY.

Analysis of the Book of Jean Pepin, Myth and Allegory, by Thomas Labeye. A student in classical languages and literature at the University of Leuven (Belgium).

We will not insist here on the various classes of myths, we want only to mark their place in the whole of the religious phenomena and to specify their function. Mythology is for our ancestors at the same time theology, metaphysics, and science. To the still pure and naive awareness of the primitive Man, any explanation appears in the form of account; since the agents which produce the phenomena of nature, and the beings which constitute the screen of it, are some living, similar in their essence with the man himself and with the animals. And these accounts will be necessarily marvelous, since their heroes are invested with powers we would describe as supernatural.

A myth, it is therefore primarily a marvelous account, explanatory of the events of the nature or of the nature of the god-or-demons. In the imitation of these fundamental myths, other myths appeared, which explain nothing, but where the usual heroes of these superhuman stories appear, mixed up with the life of the societies or of the individuals, unceasingly taking part in their daily existence. And in these myths of second formation, it would be better to call legends, the divinized ancestors take their place beside the Naturist god-or-demons. They have the same capacities, the same aptitudes, and the same adventures are supposed to them; there is often a kind of partial identification between them, and gradually these idealized men are elevated to the rank of the god-or-demons, thus involving behind them in the heavenly or chthonian Panth-eon (pleroma) , all the memories of their earthly existence.

The double nature of the god-or-demons explains the double nature of the myths where the multiple incidents of their superhuman existence are told. The god-or-demons are natural phenomena and they are also men. All the events of nature where they are mixed up are therefore changed into human adventures; and in addition, superhuman men, in relation with the men of the earth, they have an existence similar to that of the most powerful kings or more skillful wizards. It would be vain to want to explain all the episodes of it by very precise allusions to some weather or cosmic phenomenon. But in the course even of all the strange, romantic , or tragic plots, in which the fertile imagination of our distant ancestors hired them, they never divested their primitive nature. They remain, so anthropomorphized they appear to us, the sun, the moon, the north wind, the sea, the morning star, the storm cloud, the dawn or the night; and, if not the details, at least the colors of their adventures results, on the whole, from this original nature.

In the beliefs of non-civilized people, in the old and primitive forms of the great naturist religions, there is no place for the allegory, nor for the symbol: we should not seek behind the rituals the words with hidden meaning nor some mysteries; everything must be taken literally, and it is necessary to avoid interpretations which falsify the meaning of the ceremonies and of the legends.

But little by little the reflection; while being exerted on the myths, which showed the manners of thinking or of believing of the former ages; tended as of the first periods of the philosophical speculation; to change them into symbols. Because in their literal meaning, they met no longer neither the scientific requirements, nor the religious needs, of an advanced civilization. And however, they so completely formed a unit with the pious emotions, which had found in them their shapes, that it seemed that we could not refuse to them a place in the awareness and the life; without banishing from the mat the same time these emotions. Gradually, although the external shape of the myth remains, abstract, immaterial and impersonal forces, in the thought of those who continue to tell them, replace the spirits of nature or the soul/minds of dead, as explanation principle.

!--------------- ------------------- --------------------- !

Myths and rituals are the ones on the others a deep and reciprocal influence. On the one hand, it is certain myths, and in much greater number than mythologists of formerly admitted it, which have for true origin the need for providing the explanation of a ceremony, of which the primary meaning was erased from the minds [same phenomenon with the linking to Abraham of many uses of the Muslim

ceremonies] ; in addition, there are many rituals which consists of a mimed representation of the acts of the god-or-demon, and of the multiple adventures in which he was enrolled; here the worship is not another thing than the staging of a legend, only a gone into action myth. These representations in the beginning, have an effective value and are attached very narrowly to the practices of sympathetic magic we already referred allusion [baptisms and cross in Christianity for example]; later, they have only a half commemorative, half mystical, meaning, and become primarily instruments or means of edification. It is hardly necessary to point out the dominating place they occupy in the ritual of the majority of the historical mass religions. The Jewish Christian Muslim liturgy consists, moreover, to a great extent, in more or less dramatized accounts, of often lyric appearance, which comment on these ceremonies and tell, either with some detail, or only by allusion, the events that the sacred gestures mime.

The myths therefore did not create the religious feeling. They only made it possible to the Man apprehending in a tangible and concrete shape , only thing understandable for him in a certain phase of his evolution, the objects of his religious emotions, and the confused beliefs they implied. At the same time as they satisfied the need which is essential for any thinking mind, to explain to himself the world in which he lives; and that they provided the theory of this vast set of practices that we evoked under the name of magic. The length of their explanatory functions is primarily limited to that of the long period when the mind of men, unable of abstraction, could not substitute yet to the multiple wills, with which he populated the world, forces and laws. But the length of their strictly religious function is much more considerable. It is undoubtedly coextensive with that of the pious emotion itself. It seems never intended to become without object apparently, and perhaps the future reserves to it a role more important than that which seems to belong to it in the most recent and advanced forms of the historical mass religions. But from now on the myths can be only symbols with the help of which people try to obtain a representation, they know unsuitable, of the divine one; we could no longer allocate to them the historical and realistic meaning they had for our ancestors.

MYTH AND ALLEGORY.

The problem mythology poses to us, it is that it is placed especially on the level of the images, and that its language is specific to a given culture. The philosopher himself would like, to hear the language of the reason more than that of the myth. But can the intelligence, by the only way of speculation, succeed in understanding the relation of eternity to time (aiu in Celtic language)?

The field of the god-or-demons is for example the level of the eternal intelligence of the things (the understandable World). The god-or-demons symbolize the Perfections and the Personalities of the Divinity one being expressed on the Earth and in the Creation. Being located out of time, they do not communicate directly with the men. They go through the semi-god-or-demons, such Hesus or the Celtic Hercules called Ogmius (not to be confused with the symbol of the physical force that is Camulus Smertrius).

Hesus establishes the link between the world of the god-or-demons and the world of the human beings, between the eternal world, the heavenly world, and the temporal world (the tangible world), the earthly world, the land on which the man walks, eats, lives and dies.

The forces we call god-or-demons speak to men through the druids who are interpreters of them.

Sometimes the god-or-demons choose to be incarnated among the men, but they do not give up for as much their condition which made them immortal. There are thus a distinction between the heavenly level and the human level, and a passage from the one to the other. The eternal, in the myth, is not an abstraction;it has a face, it has even a multitude of faces. The faces of the eternal are depicted by the different personalities of the god-or-demons.

The word mythology presents at least two meanings. It applies not only to the simple collection of the myths of a civilization, but also to the science and the explanation of the myths. The second meaning of the word designates in a way the “philosophy “of the first. In their reflections about the myths, the philosophers adopted very diverse attitudes.

The mythology condemned as a mistake.

From this point of view, mythology would match the first explanation of the natural phenomena of which the men of original times would have ascribed the production to higher beings, designed naturally as human beings, presenting all the human characteristics, but equipped with more power. The accounts conveying this mythology would quickly have been perceived as forgery. However, this false and anthropomorphic explanation would have persisted through the taste of the fables and the attachment to Antiquity.

Scientists like Herder, Humboldt and Max Müller, proposed a second theory, that of the linguistic misunderstanding. According to them, the men of the first times worked out valid scientific designs but, for lack of suitable technical terms, should have expressed them by names looking personal. The scientific theories would have been dramatized. People perceive no longer thereafter the scientific nature of these accounts, people interpreted them at face value then the bards accentuated them.

Others lastly regard mythology as a gratuitous poetic invention, simply intended to satisfy the creative instinct of its authors, and the taste of an audience liking the supernatural.

The recognition of an indirect truth of mythology. The allegoristic assumption.

Schelling refuses to regard paganism as a degradation, because if mankind had started by knowing the truth about God or the Demiurge, it could not unlearn it . According to him, mythology is previous to the Revelation as its base and its essential matter. In the same way, according to Schelling, mythology cannot be considered as an invention. We cannot imagine a people deprived of his mythology, which is the view of the world in which it gathers. It should consequently be admitted that the birth of mythology is concomitant with that of the people itself. The poets consequently prove to be some organizers rather than some creators of mythology. Mythology would have a certain value of truth the theory of the allegory endeavors to understand.

The allegoristic explanation supposes in mythology an ambivalent structure, the duality of a usual meaning and a hidden meaning. Men, through the myths, disguised the simple truth to be more persuasive. It is therefore necessary to distinguish the allegorical expression of the author and the allegorical interpretation of the reader, to discover the truth. This allegoristic view of mythology achieved great success with the German romanticism.

The allegoristic theory of mythology takes on various specifications, according to the nature of the truth which is supposed to be expressed by picturesque or narrative appearance. It can therefore be historical (Éuhemerus), physical (Stoics), moral (Bacon), metaphysical (Neoplatonists), psychological (Jung, Freud) or religious (Bultmann).

The discovery of the immediate truth of mythology

The allegoristic thesis, in its various forms, therefore admits some value of truth to mythology. But it is an extrinsic truth, in the sense that it is not mythology itself which is true, but a meaning which often deviates from it to the extreme. We cannot consequently understand the nature even of the image. Indeed, as soon as we define the myth as a sign, the interest gives up it to go on the meaning. In the same way, the automatic recourse to the allegory supposes a theoretical philosophy former to mythology. However this assumption is false, because the same men were mythologists and philosophers at the same time.

The former history of the mythology philosophy is precisely the objective of the work of Jean Pepin.

All the authors agree to define allegoria as the rhetorical figure which consists in saying a thing to make another understandable. It is not a primary figure, it appears as soon as another process of rhetoric is prolonged a certain time, the metaphor. Allegoria therefore requires an interpretation from the reader.

Such an excess of allegory can only cause a reaction: it came with Plato. However, this judgment of the expressive value of the myth, astonishes on behalf of Plato who, it is notorious, so often resorted to it. Plato considers perhaps opinion as being lower than science; but he knows to distinguish, beside the false opinion, a true opinion. The science, of which he has a very high idea, is the knowledge of the unchanging ; its field is therefore restricted. Consequently, the myth, which is not a gratuitous fiction, but a charged with meaning account, is connected with the true opinion, it gets the best mode of expression of the probable one. Plato therefore condemns the allegorical interpretation of Homer, for the only reason it could not discover, in his poems, a doctrinal message, which is absent in it by definition; but he admits even uses himself, allegory, as a means of expression, provided that we have something to express with it.

In spite of his taste for clear presentation , Aristotle liked the myth. It is known that he saw in the” astonishment “ the origin of philosophical curiosity; however the myth, by its extraordinary look, causes the astonishment precisely; what shows that to like the myths is an indirect way to become philosopher. For Aristotle, myth is not an unimportant fiction; it conveys a teaching, which it had been better perhaps to express in ordinary language, but that we must not necessarily scorn. To benefit fully from the lesson of these myths, they should be stripped from anthropocentric fantasies with which people distorted them thereafter. Brought back to their original purity, they are carrying a divine teaching on the nature of the elements. Contrary to Plato, Aristotle therefore does not see in the myth a purely arbitrary fiction, deprived of every didactic impact . The myth is for him the allegorical expression of a rational teaching.

The popular god-or-demons should not be taken literally, but their person and their history are the bearers of a meaning, it is necessary to find again behind descriptions and accounts which would be ridiculous if we dwelt on them; they represent sometimes tendencies of the soul (moral allegory), but generally elementary forces of nature (physical allegory). It is possible to distinguish the true senses of these god-or-demons by the etymological observation of their names, which are in general, in close connection with the psychological or cosmic reality they designate. This rationalization of the myths saves their religious value besides, man gives up the popular worships well, but is to find in the physical forces that they incarnate as many specifications of the true divinity, the only one it is necessary to venerate.

* The first and stronger of the figure of speech is repetition.

The realistic allegory.

We can consider that the initiator of the realistic allegory was Éuhemerus, a Sicilian of the middle of the 3rd century before our era. His starting point was incontestably an aspect of the stoical theology, according to which several god-or-demons would not be other than men, that people would have deified in reward of outstanding services provided to the society. He extended this explanation to the totality of the Panth-eon or popular pleroma. He thus assigns to the worship of the god-or-demons a double origin: on the one hand, before the civilized times, most powerful and craftier ones of the chiefs

claimed a divine dignity unduly; in addition, the divinity was attributed voluntarily by the peoples, after their death, to the most valorous kings as to the inventors who had improved their way of living.

Plotinus and myths.

The philosophy of Plotinus grants the first place to an ineffable and impossible to name, reality. Such a philosophy of the inexpressible one, as soon as it wants to codify itself or to be handed down , is reduced to using an approaching language, a symbolic expression. Plotinus knows that the mythical expression is necessarily inadequate. He announces thus that the myth, which is by its nature an account taking place in time, described as successive beings in reality synchronic, and that only a distinction of value characterize. But this inaccuracy of the myth has a useful counterpart: by duplicating in the time beings who, to tell the truth are compact and stocky, it constitutes an instrument of analysis and teaching. It is enough not to forget that this separation is purely conceptual. The myth therefore has an analytical and didactic value which, in the mind of Plotinus, is interdependent of a theory of the image. The myth is an image and, for this reason, reflects the truth. But it is not itself the truth, from where the need, to arrive to it, to exceed the myth.

Macrobius and the classification of the myths.

In the beginning of the 5th century, Macrobius, Latin compiler fed with Greek Neoplatonism, devotes several pages of his Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, to the defense of the myth as technique of philosophical expression. According to him, the mistake, in philosophy, would be as large to condemn all the myths collectively, as to admit them all indistinctly. A sorting therefore should be carried out. In the whole of the fables, Macrobius distinguishes the accounts of which the goal is simply to charm the ear (for example, the popular comedy) and these of which the objective is to incite the virtue.

In this second category, Macrobius also distinguishes between the myths of which the subject as well as the development are purely fictitious, and the others of which the subject remains true, although the development is fictitious. Lastly, among the latter, it is necessary to distinguish these of which the account is indecent from these of which the account is honest.

Conclusion: mythology of philosophy, philosophical utility of mythology.

In the beginning, mythology seems as a first but also naive, try of explanation of the universe. It is therefore possible to see in it the childhood of philosophy. But the progress of the latter quickly led it to disavow its mythical origin, to be even defined as the antithesis of what its starting point was. Nevertheless, reason sometimes needs to find its origins, and this return to basics often occurs after a period of intransigent rationalism. However if reason return to basics thus, it is that it finds some benefit there. Jean Pepin therefore takes over here, in a very schematic way, the various advantages of the mythical expression for the expression of philosophical truths.

MYTHS AND INTERPRETATION.

The opposition of a literal meaning and of various possible interpretations is not only related to the myths or the Scriptures, but it is specific to any form of expression. You can tell by the fact that various interpretations of the same play,of the same movie, of the same novel, of a picture (see for example the famous drawing representing a woman carried out by William Hill in 1915 or the Gestaltpsychology) … We can consequently reckon that, since man communicates, this phenomenon has always existed.

The study of similar phenomena, but closer to us in time, could bring a new light on the question. Let us take an example: the fables of Aesop. Everyone agrees today to say that these fables present a second meaning, hidden under the literal meaning. But when it is a question of interpreting these fables, to release the second meaning from them second, the task, for us, is far from being simple. Indeed, on the one hand, the interpretation of these fables is dependent on the historical and political context of a century in which we live no longer. And we can know only through historical works or lessons of history. But, in addition, the unawareness or the ignorance of this context does not prohibit to propose new interpretations of these fables in connection with our time. Moreover, what is it necessary to think about these fables and their interpretations when we know that the author was inspired, for their composition, of older apologues remained anonymous? It does not appear improbable, consequently, that myths underwent a rather similar treatment. And if we remember that myths were regarded as a word without author, come through the ages; that they informed the men of Antiquity, who had a knowledge of them more extended, of course, than ours, who could see

adaptations of them in the tragedies; we will be no longer hardly astonished by the extent of this allegorical treatment of the myths.

Thomas Labeye. A student in classical languages and literature at the University of New Leuven, Belgium.

NOTE OF THE EDITOR OF THIS COMPILATION.

We drew aside from the start the explanations of Judeo-Christian or Muslim type, considering their total bad faith. In the 17th century, another assumption was indeed put forward : mythology should be considered as a plagiarism of the truths of the Jewish Revelation. The supporters of this theory (Grotius for example) intended to strengthen the Christian positions by working to establish that the religious forms which appear most distant from them, in reality proceed of the same starting point, distorted by a foolish interpretation. This theory is incorporated within the framework of a much vaster debate, that of the supposed anteriority of monotheism compared to polytheism as regards religion. Mankind would have received monotheism on deposit, but, unable to keep it in his original purity, would have let it become distorted. Cf Muslim theology on this subject. This point of view was also adopted by the traditionalist current which considers that, in the field of the religion, of the language and of the constitutional law, the Revelation given on deposit to primitive Mankind contained truth in a pure state.

INTRODUCTION TO DRUIDIC MYTHOLOGY.

The purpose of this work is to make these strange legends which compose the Panth-eon or pleroma of the druidism understandable by the young schoolboys of druidism. A Killed by the letter Mythology, but that Spirit can resurrect.

The goal of this opuscule is to make us understand the druidic myths FROM THE INSIDE, through the various Schools of thought of the free and independent Celtica Litavia (of the great Celtica). That of Ambicatus, that of which motto was: “ Truth in the heart, strength in the arm, achievement in the speech. “In other words “argute loqui “in the mouth of Cato.

What tries to cause this booklet it is not so much new “reasoning “ that new feelings, reminiscences, flashes of intuition, able to make us have a presentiment of the secret desire of these ancient peoples, our distant (spiritual) ancestors. This is why it will be necessary for us to let the simple scientistic and rationalist reason which, like the most beautiful woman in the world, can only give what she has, reaching its limits on the spot at times ; and to distinguish the druidic mythology seen from outside, well, from the druidic mythology seen from inside. Because with regard to Celtic mythology, it is not with one but with two different points of view, we deal, that from the outside (that for example of the writings of the Greek or Latin authors. They present to us tales and legends with spiritual framework that we persist to change into History because non-believing science wants no longer to hear talk of religion). And that of the inner side (that of the druid of Lucian speaking about Hercules and Ogmius, for example).

Again a Celtic mythology more will say some people! It was quite necessary since, of all these which were published up to now, except the profound scholarship of some of them, to which we pay homage readily (see the thanks and the bibliography appearing at the end of this opuscule); none “had truly slipped into the shoes“of the druid of Lucan, in his parable about Ogmius we could say, in order to fathom out his soul.

However how to make the men of today sharing what was the luminous certainty of the ancient druids? Because they at least, had still really the certainty that God is in us (that + is in us!)

People present always today to us, their mythology, from an “external “ point of view, as a strange and diverting fossil, at the same time incongruous and immoral. But how could we judge it or understand it, we who are plunged in the scientistic obscurantism, ultimate, but logical and unavoidable , result, of a made tasteless Christianity in a disenchanted world? Because in this field Christianity, by fighting in an ill-considered way every other spirituality that its, on the pretext of idolatry, had literally bitten the hand that fed it.

Here is the cause of the misunderstanding between former Celts and us: we, we reason… them, they felt, they smelled, as hounds of which the sensitivity in this respect was maintained by men, the druids, who, themselves, reasoned but also felt at the same time. The teaching of the ancient druids was indeed extremely eclectic. It included above all a theology, metaphysics and some ethics, but also astronomy, physics, and natural history.

There is a great difference between the current philosophers and the ancient druids. They had indeed personally lived and even experimented all that, and they were the living proof of the veracity of their metaphysical postulates. The druids of the Great Bear were often also true Shamans. They therefore spoke about god-or-demons they had seen face to face (about forces that they had learned how to handle), about the attributes as well as the divine powers they really had, as a result of a long training.

There were many great philosophers, precursors of ours in ancient Celtica, but there were also many anonymous Shamans, whose humble mystic of the every day exceeded in profundity that of the philosophers in the public eye. It is from the co-operation of both that the great Celtic myths came out.

The peoples of the Great Bear (the peoples of the Celtica Litavia i.e., of the free and independent great Celtica of the time of Ambicatus) did not understand these legends and these divine genealogies, in the same manner as us. We who attend no longer the god-or-demons (since the break of Christianity, even if this one was spread out in time and needed several centuries to be imposed in the minds); we who have no longer the teaching of the druids to support as of childhood a superhuman ideal. We always study them from outside today, whereas they require to be comprehended FROM THE INSIDE (see the parable of the druid of Lucan about Ogmius and Heracles).

If we examine only the dead dust of a dead and quite dead past, the Life and the secret thought of this great civilization, which was the first in Europe, always escape us. In the same manner as a histological section of dead tissue will never make us know the life which livened it formerly.

“Admodum dedita religionibus” in a mass like the Ramadan. Caesar (B.G. VI, XVI)

An example will enable us to illustrate this matter; that of the modern Olympic Games and that of the “funeral “ games in a way instituted by Lug in the honor of his (adoptive) mother, 1st Elembivi of each year (around on August 1st): the Lugnasade.

D’Arbois de Jubainville, in an important and forgotten passage, announced the episode of the Celtiberians, new allies of the Romans who, in 206 before our era, provided free to Scipio, established in Carthagena; as many fighters as it was necessary to celebrate funeral games in the honor of his father.

The exemption from payment is secondary compared to the importance of the religious fact such as it is described. The name of the andabates or “blind gladiators “confirms if necessary this importance. It goes without saying also that the funeral games were reserved for great characters, since they had as a consequence the passage in the Next World of totality or part of the antagonists of these singular combats; who had the honor thus (and that explains the “exemption from payment “ so liked by Romans!) to accompany or join the deceased person. We are consequently very close to the human sacrifices, and, nevertheless, it is not a question of human sacrifices!

The goal of the funeral games of the famous Celtic Lugnasade was not at all probably and all similarly therefore , the race for the performance or the sport. The funeral games of Lugnasade were a physico-spiritual ordeal.

"My son, my son, Symphorian, do not lose sight of the god * for whom you die, have him always in your mind. My dear son, take courage, death is not to be feared when it does only that to lead us to life. Look at the Heaven, and that your eyes follow your heart, throw them on him who reigns in heaven. Today man doesn’t take away your life, man only exchanges it for a better one to you. Today, my son, by a happy change, you'll go to the heavenly life " (Acts of Saint Symphorian of Autun).

* “Nate, nate, Synforiane, memento beto to divo “or “Nati, nati, Synforiane, mentem obeto dotiuo “ according to certain variants of the acts of the martyrdom of saint Symphorian (cf. for example the Turin codex).

The goal of the games of these Lugnasades therefore lied in a human realization (the duel, the confrontation, the sport) for a spiritual realization (the passing in the Next World).

The first day of these festivities of Lugnasade was reserved besides for the purification of the participants. People sacrificed to the god-or-demons (while following rituals of which the druids took care jealously). But to die while fighting for the greater glory of the Gaulish princess (Fir Bolg) adoptive mother of Lug, became a true posthumous title for all these Celtic gladiators.

Individually or personally “Admodum dedita religionibus” Caesar (B.G. VI, XVI)

The beauty of the bodies and of the weapons was to then equalize that which people ascribe to the god-or-demons as we saw it, but it is this voluntarily agreed sacrifice which was to make the rest. i.e., to change the human self until the moment when it would reach the purity of the divine self, its higher beauty.

What was just been said about the games of these primitive Lugnasades is enough to make us able to imagine to what extent the Celts were religiously enthusiastic and nostalgic of the Other World, were desirous to join again the god-or-demons.

The true Celt [the Celtic hearted and minded person ] placed all his acts, all his goods, under the safeguard of a god-or-demon. From the cradle to grave, each time of his life ran out under the protection of such or such deity of fairy, whom he determined appropriate to call upon.

In the day and age of the Celtica Litavia i.e., of the free and independent great Celtica, that of the time of the king of the kings named Ambicatus, everything therefore was centered around the religion: family, manners, laws, rituals, etc.

The religious demonstrations produced a climate of enthusiasm we can no longer imagine (admodum dedita religionibus, Caesar writes in his B.G. VI, XVI). Because the Celts, thanks to the druids, knew what they came to do on this Earth, and which was the true goal of their life. Even the common people knew that behind the apparently whimsical legends, related to the druidic Panth-eon or pleroma true solutions were hidden, that the keys were in the various Schools of thought disputing the primacy in the “Celtica Litavia “.

He could meet there “inspired” men of auentieticos type (awenydd in Wales) who, although still of this world, had already a foot in the other. Celtic mythology is a purely religious matter as we could see it, but it is not nevertheless forbidden to laymen, of course, to comment on it, “with what is at hand “ on the contrary! It is always advantageous to confront various points of view.

But let us return to our sheep! According to some people, the Celts would have left no valuable message to be handed down. These people, whose ethics can pit itself against that of Christianity, where god-or-demons and goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, interfered so closely in everyday life; would have bequeathed us only a kind of catalog of naive images, accompanied by a draft of oral literature, in which the sublime one would rival with the sacrilege, adultery with purity, beauty with ugliness? How this great people so intelligent, so subtle, so sensitive (its law and its poetry prove it) so mystical, guided by a whole host of thinkers known by the whole ancient world (the druids); and of which we did not finish exhausting the literary or cultural treasures (even the legend of Robin Hood would be of Celtic origin - to see Irish Fenians -); could it on these conditions, produce such a quantity of extravagant and foolish accounts, liked par everybody, including its greatest lawyers? In order to calm the terrors of a still infantile Mankind? It is time to realize that the ancient Celtica was one of the purest headlights of human spirituality and that it stands comparison with Buddhism.

Druidic mythology and Panth-eon or pleroma are in reality still unexplored fields because prohibited to those who cannot understand what these legends represent truly; where the truth is dissimulated in turn behind the mask of hubris, ridicule, anger, adultery, incest, or then of the more muddled romanticism. However the pass key which opens all these locks, exists: it is, from the Jewish mythology to Christian mythology through Buddhist mythology: the religious comparative literature.

In the West Bible is used as basic reference to the, even not practicing, masses. This is why it will be useful, at times, to compare druidic mythology, with this Judeo-Christian Bible.

The Celtica Litavia ( The great free and independent Celtica of the time of the king of the kings named Ambicatus) had besides a whole sacred literature, because Celtic mythology IS the Bible of this time, in spite of its apparent naivety.

This way of seeing the things, of course, will grieve the historians attached to the “letter “of these myths and of this Panth-eon (pleroma). Druidic Myths and Panth-eon or Pleroma , nevertheless find their true meaning only in light of a religious comparative literature, objective, and without any bias . It is true that at first glance, the Judeo-Christian Bible “ looks more serious “. The characters of Yahweh and Moses, even if the latter was Egyptian of culture, hardly lend themselves to imagination.

Unlike those of the Celts, whose imaginative liveliness brought the divine entities closer to the men, at the point to make one of them coming down almost in each home (fairies of matres type, elementals and other genies of places). Besides this ancient sacred over proximity explains the high spirituality of the druids.

All the men are sons or brothers of the god-or-demons. Some rare individuals remember it, others forgot it, and others still, although knowing it, believe no longer in that.

Man of today lost his heart.

The fall of the mystical spirit and of the ethics, whereas it is on the contrary necessary to these virtues to reach a maximum height, marked our civilization with its infamy stigma. Vertiginous fall of the human dignity which man counterbalanced (at least it is believed) by the sentimentality and the spinelessness or the excessive indulgence. Ignorance takes the face of wisdom, as the Morrigane had envisaged it at the end of the battle of the Plain of the standing stones or mounds (see the book of our library entitled “History of the peace with the gods “).

Sad civilization that the one in which people poison Litavia, the nourishing Earth which carries us, because Earth is also a living being. In the meantime, there is a royal road, a splendid way, a path, therefore, to which any man may devote his life, his efforts, his hopes, and which is summed up in 11 words: “ to reverence the gods, to abstain from wrongdoing, and to be a man, a true one “.

It is to what the elite of the Celtic people was devoted, it is what from now on we will try hard to do , because the true Barbarians finally, it is us today!

The ancient druids, themselves, spoke tirelessly about “inner “life and we persist to understand, “external life “.

The question is: why therefore ancient druids were so “admodum dediti religionibus “(B.G. VI. XVI)?

It is by no means, as it is repeated to us since so a long time, because they were Barbarians.

It was said one day, to make fun, that the druids had succeeded in making the god-or-demons going down to their wells or their cottages. What is certain, it is that the divine concepts were infinitely more familiar to the men of this land than they are so nowadays. Each home had its guardian god-or-demon or its goddess-or-demonesss, or fairies if it is preferred. The staunch Christian today would look an atheist in the Celto-Galatia of the time of the king of the kings Ambicatus, where spiritual ethics originated in impenetrable forests. In this time people did not trifle like nowadays with the sacred. God-or-demons and habits were respected. Severe laws punished the sacrilege hard. Caesar briefly mentions the killing in the cruelest sufferings of the one who dared to steal some spoils devoted to the gods (Book VI, 17).

We may, of course, make fun of the men seing supernatural everywhere, but nowadays we exaggerate in the other direction, and our atheistic materialism sterilizes any opening on the infinite one.

These Barbarians of Celts perhaps were too close to the god-or-demons, but what is sure, it is that we, we are too “distant “ from it. On the disenchantment of the World, to see the work by Max Weber and particularly his (Protestant) ethics.

However atheistic morals IN THE MATERIALIST SENSE OF THE TERM is a lure.

It has no possible root in the heart of the man to fix itself in it firmly. There does not exist besides true atheistic materialist morals in a strict sense of the term, and the atheists who have a higher ethics are also in fact religious minds in their way, but unconscious of being thus. According to Strabo, certain Celts, and especially the Galicians in Spain, were atheistic. But is this possible or is it rather of a lack of nuance of the thought of Strabo, unable to understand the subtleties of certain druidic Schools? In any case here the quotation of his text: “ Some say the Callaicans have no god, but the Celtiberians and their neighbors on the north offer sacrifices to a nameless god at the seasons of the full moon, by night, in front of the doors of their houses, and whole households dance in chorus and keep it up all night “(Strabo, Geography III, 4,16).

The lay men who have a high ethical code are those who listen unwillingly to their “inner god-or-demons “. The true atheists are above all anticlerical.

Man has the religion which is appropriate for his mentality, just as he always has the government as he deserves. If the Frenchmen since 2007 have at their head an upstart vulgar and ready for anything to succeed conspicuously in the life, it is perhaps because they form no longer the great nation of formerly (since 1914? Since 1939? Since 1962?) If nowadays they are most cynical of buffoons who control us and cheat us by preaching to the people efforts and sacrifices, whereas they stuff at our expense ; it should be well recognized that, in the case of the parliamentary democracies, it is us who sent them into power. Freely and spontaneously, in the secrecy of the ballot boxes, without a gun being directed on our head. A people mainly composed of egoistic citizens and ignoramuses up to its pseudo-elites can only renew in power , indefinitely, such leaders! Where are the enlightened women and men, voting for a great project socially right and realistic from the point of view of ecology (degrowth) ???

Christianity seeks to get for the man a (collective).social happiness. The ancient druids knew, themselves, like Buddha, but in a stronger way that happiness is only a purely individual frame of mind, and that it does not rise from ad infinitum growth, but from the detachment. It is not a sentimentality love in the Christian way, but an attraction for the divinity. In the Middle Ages, the knighthood of the Round Table ultimately echoed to it besides. The true knight was to be powerful, resistant, hard for himself, but helpful with the weak.

Ancient druids too, spoke to all those who were ready to conquer the divinity including by violence. But this violence, it had to be obviously used against oneself, one’s passions (see the notion of great jihad in Islam land) and with each destroyed passion, we will see it, the death of a giant or of a monster corresponded in mythology.

The ways of Modern science are different from those of ancient druids. However, the soul is an instrument quite as powerful as the Reason, its power is “unlimited “.

Reason is not the only field of the psychic activity. Why therefore let this field with such surprising possibilities, the field of parapsychology, being waste again?

For that Man initially has to be again aware, of course, of the presence in him of this divine tear of fire amber and its mysterious magnetic power symbolizes.

It is therefore necessary to attract Man upwards and not downwards, to encourage him to surpass himself, to become a superman. What we need is to save the Superman, this rival brother of the god-or-demons, who is in us.

The druidic myths of the Book of Conquests of Ireland and of the Battle of the Plain of the standing stones or mounds, even of that which was fought for the possession of the Talantio (the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, Tailtiu, called Rosemartha on the Continent); give to us many details about these quarrels with the god-or-demons. Epic fights, peace treaties…

Isn't it important, on these conditions, for each one, to study thoroughly the various spiritual techniques of our ancestors, in order to choose that which is appropriate to him best? In a word to locate the various possible ways of blooming of the souls.

“Druidic Mythology “ we have just written. It is not a slip of the tongue: through that we understand the ancient Celtic mythology such as the druids referred to it, by symbols and parables. In other words, the Celtic mythology, found through synthesis, and also through filtering, of the mass of more or less scattered and distorted data, including by many current pseudo-druids. It is by following the walking one (Setanta) that we find the path. The ancient druids were perfectly aware of the importance of the life on earth , inescapable phase of the development of the human self. They knew even the best means of speaking to the souls. The former Celts were going in their schools to learn these laws of the human or divine nature.

Is it logical and wise to reject the lessons of men who better than whoever scanned the mysteries of the human soul and her body? Lessons of men who were able to tame the bodies (see the riastrades of the hesus Setanta Cuchulainn)? But let us stop there, we will have the opportunity to speak again of what the ancient druids could do (see the forbhais droma damhghaire), and especially why they could do it and we uns no.

Let us avoid to reject the spiritualistic legacy of the druidic mythology; this heritage is for us, men of the 21st century, the last bridge built over the abyss caused by the perversion of our society (disenchantment). The absolute primacy of the economics and of the market, the absence of superhuman ideal, deprive youth of noble aspirations, of transcendent directives. Not to dedicate themselves to a superhuman ideal constitutes for the well-born children, a true negation of the life. Youth will find in the heroic myths of the ancient druidism an unbounded ideal, a reason to live and to hope in a destiny to build (gaefa * not gaesa),on the same scale of its ambition, which is always immense. And the men most distant from their spiritual source will be able too, then, be in communion with the immanent divine one. What this opuscule intended for the young schoolboys of the druidism, therefore proposes today, it is a return to basics for the salmon of their wisdom. A return to the time when the men could still distinguish what came from the Heaven or from the Earth, because they felt the god-or-demons [ the preternatural powers of the Man] present in the Universe and in them.

* Note on the Destiny at the Vikings [BUT THE SAME THING CAN BE SAID OF THE FORMER CELTS]

It was believed for a long time that the Scandinavians, in the centuries which were previous their conversion to Christianity – 8th and 9th centuries -, had reached a kind of irreligion, skepticism or indifference. That was due to a sentence which is often met in their texts: Hann blôtadi ekki, hann tradi à sinn eiginn màtt ok megin (he did not sacrifice to the gods, he believed in his own strength and in his luck). The recent searches of Swedish scientists like Folke Ström and Henrik Ljungberg particularly , established that such an interpretation was based on nothing. It underlined on the contrary the participation in the sacred which explained that a man felt as having ground for surpassing anecdotal gods, if we can say, and for believing only in himself, i.e., in his own luck and his capacity to succeed since these came to him from the divine powers. The expression in question (Hann blôtadi ekki, hann

tradi à sinn eiginn màtt ok megin) far from being a profession of skepticism was on the contrary an act of implicit worship! [At least such is the opinion of Regis Boyer on the notion of gaefa].

The Vikings did not believe in an immutable Fate. Whatever the projects of their gods on their subject, the former Scandinavians and Germanic ones remain free of the detail of their life and believe in their ability to push their luck, to modify the procedure (gaefa), their talents, their strength and their will, their capacity of success, and also in the support of their ancestors: what they call “eiginn mattr ok megin.” Pragmatic, they are in no case fatalists undergoing a fate. It is above all fighters and free men who decide on their destiny at the risk of displeasing the gods. They believe in the magic or rather in the constant presence of supernatural or preternatural one and in the divination to crack the projects of their enemies, of the gods and of the guardian forces, in order to change the course of the events, and to pre-empt the destiny, therefore to modify it, because nothing is maktoub, nothing is written definitively. IN THAT THEY ARE EXACTLY LIKE CELTIC PEOPLE.

There is no destiny that their will or the assistance of their gods or of their ancestors cannot modify, because the Scandinavians were men of action liking the values of action. They therefore request the forces, the gods and their ancestors, who answer in their dreams “mik dreymdi, at Freyja” (for example: Freyja made me dream that…).

The basic questions are not those evoked by Saint Patrick for the daughters of the king, they are the following ones: from where do we come? Why are we on Earth? Where do we go and what do we become after death?

We are not spiritual orphans dedicated to becoming some “spiritually Semitic ones “ through adoption, as I know no longer which bishop (of Rome) said it. Ancient Celtica is always living , of course no longer of a physical life like formerly, but of a spiritual life, livened by the eternal youth (jovinca) of its god-or-demons, and by the eternal youth of the sources of its spirit.

It ensures those who assimilate the imperishable essence of it, those who can probe the abyss of reflection of its various Schools of thought that it can be still for today as a rejuvenation treatment (jovinca) . The possibility of going up one day to sit in the secret world of the god-or-demons, always exists. The possibility of sitting around the god-or-demons as did it formerly the hesus called “the Hound of Culann “: the human model who went back like a salmon to the springs even of the true life.

The Celtica Litavia (the great free and independent Celtica) expects the return of its outlaws, and only the pollution of our minds by the miasmas of modern civilization, prevents us from seeing this movement is already partly started besides. The mystical doctrine of this race of poets “who speak the very language of the gods “always attracts the souls and captivates them.

The robotized West will contemplate one day again, into each other’s eyes, the fascinating litany of its god-or-demons and of its goddess-or-demonesses, or of its fairies.

Our spiritual blindness is nevertheless such that it prevents us from noticing, in the human crowd, those who succeeded in making growing in them “the impossible ideal “ which haunted the heart of the ancient Celtic heroes of the time of Ambicatus. And who succeeded like them, after many and many inner confrontations, “to see the god-or-demons face to face “.

These supermen of the 21st century, of whom the privilege, dearly paid, makes them able to have a foot in each world, the true one as well as ours, are not intoxicated by their successes. Like the hesus called Cuchulainn in the Irish legends, they are frequently turned round, and with a distressed heart, in order to see whether, in the herd of the men, some people do not leave everything to come to help them or to assist them in their ultimate fight. These new heroes, if they always fight furious battles, do it no longer in the crash of the chariots and the vociferations of the fighters. They are secret, long, exhausting, quiet, battles, where man has not other goal only to overcome himself (great Jihad Muslims say).

It is also what the former druids wanted to render comprehensible to us with their epic legends: it is no more difficult and praiseworthy victory that which we win over oneself.

Druidic Myths and Panth-eon or Pleroma are as much of sealed “bibles “ waiting until the true elites of Mankind, who are by no means its social hierarchies, quite to the contrary, are able to decipher enigmas of them. And waiting until the human awareness, nauseated by the stupidity (the ignorance or the lack of intelligence) and the hatred, finally aspires to find the vivifying breath of the Spirit.

As myths resulting from the imagination of the fundamental archetypes, all mythologies come from the Spirit, but misfortune comes from the letter. The myth speaks with the divine we carry in us, and has nothing to do with the letter. It seeks to start resonances in us, it tries to make images, sounds, feelings, affinities, reappear in our mind by shaking the dust off our ancestral fears.

From there the unrivaled charm and the profundity of its mythology of which the imposing fables envelop by making light of the clearest truths.

Because the ancient druids were in a way the own prestidigitators of their thought. Their imagination made light of the possible sacrileges, but it could also highlight the soul/mind, entirely made of nuances, of the Celtica Litavia (the Great Celtica). And conversely! The genius of the Celtic paganism found in its mythology a refined means of expression, worthy of its civilization. This is why the contents of its Panth-eon or pleroma and of its myths nevertheless could reach us, in its entire freshness.

We can only regret or envy this mystical blaze of the genius of the paganism, this trustful and familiar closeness with the god-or-demons, factor of the high ethics we know, that of the knights of the Round Table.

In this respect the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.is doubly lower than the druidism even than Christianity! There does not exist, for example, in the Islamic ideology (Quran hadiths and Madhahib); equivalents of the parables of the adulteress (Christianity-Gospel) or of the wife of Partholon (druidism: Irish book of conquests). Nor equivalent of the law punishing more seriously a murder committed against a foreigner therefore somebody having other gods than that which is perpetrated against fellow countrymen (or co-religionist therefore by definition at the time, cf. the druidism according to Nicholas of Damascus: collection of remarkable customs); even still of the parable of the good Samaritan (Christianity-Gospel). Without taking into account the fact that the ancient druids also (they were homophonon according to Diodorus of Sicily, book V, 31) spoke, themselves, the divine language par excellence (kalam nafsi. But it is true that Mu’tazilites recognized that Quran was not uncreated. Duly noted!)

Happy therefore was the civilization which had Schools of thought where men could find a real hope to go back to the source like a salmon coming back in the river having seen it being born. Where the gestures of the daily existence still had a sacred meaning, where people discussed the god-or-demons and their powers,

“They discuss and impart to the youth many elements respecting the stars and their motion, respecting the extent of the world and of our earth, respecting the nature of things, respecting the power and the majesty of the immortal gods “ (Caesar VI,14).

In which fight and combat were catharsis, prayers, as work and factor of hope religious feasts, were. If the Celts were

not all free minds like the Indutiomarus of Cicero, the fault of that fell by no means on their druids, but on their insufficient evolution.

All was not said about this spirituality the West rightly regards as one of the sources of its mystic. One of the sources of its mystic, but of which the key would have remained at the bottom of another age, at the bottom of another world.

How many decades of work, patience, accumulation of knowledge, it will be necessary in the study of the religion of the Celts, before finding the discussion thread, making it possible to understand finally, the druidic Panth-eon or pleroma and its myths? What recklessness is it not necessary to venture in a right exegetical interpretation of these disconcerting tales and legends?

Because all is symbolic fiction (objective and true reality, but expressed in a picturesque human language, even anthropomorphic) in druidic mythology. Giants, monsters, anger of the god-or-demons, crimes, incests and adultery, and even pitched battles where each hero by his exploits tries to rise higher than his friend or his valorous enemy. Case of the great walking hound known as Setanta Cuchulainn, in Ireland for example.

Myth is not, among Celts, the result, emanation, or creation, of a human imagination and fantasy. It is the expression of a truth of a higher nature, revealed in a form likely to be understood by those who are able to understand it. What Hindus call vyuha and Muslims shirk (to condemn it).

Druidic philosophy appears above all as the work of thinkers pertaining to a religious community characterized by myths, belonging to a people whose religion is based on myths, and a Panth-eon or more exactly a Pleroma of gods or demons (Albiobitus + Anderodubno = Annwn).

As we already have had the opportunity to notice it, Panth-eon or druidic Pleroma and myths are not accounts of glorious and past exploits (even if they are sometimes presented thus), but an attempt at

meta-historical explanation. The events which are reported in its accounts are the symbols of the processes which took place vertically, primordial theogonic events, but also eternal events.

Myths and druidic Panth-eon or Pleroma make it possible to simplify concepts difficult to render comprehensible to novices.

Myth is a meta or a hiero-history having no reality, but equipped nevertheless with a great explanatory power, all occurring “as if… “

An example of meta-history. The preternatural powers of Adam and Eve in Judeo-Islamic-Christianity.

Each one knows, or at least should know, that Adam and Eve never existed (what existed, it is a small population of a few tens of individuals). And that it is a Mesopotamian myth revealed by God (or the Holy Spirit following the Schools) to the Sumerian intellectuals of the time, in order to explain to the men why they had thus been created, by God or the Demiurge (to honor him to venerate him. Or for love according to the Schools, which is not very likely and in any event unexplainable and illogical, so…).

On the other hand, for the Judeo-Islamic-Christians, everything occurs as if Adam and Eve had been endowed then by the Elohim (the god-or-demons or God, or the Demiurge, at your choice) with preternatural gifts like body immortality, perfect control of nature through reason, or absence of negative desires, like concupiscence. Not forgetting the absence of suffering and the knowledge of the natural and supernatural truths. The few billion Judeo-Islamic-Christians peopling our planet affirm that Adam and Eve accepted these gifts, not only for themselves, but for their posterity.

Here what we call meta-history. Nothing in Science, History, or Paleontology, even Philosophy, justifies such a myth, but for the Judeo-Islamic-Christians believers, everything takes place as if the things had occurred in this way. There is no other possible explanation to that they believe to detect today of human nature. And it is true that if we adopt their various points of view on the subject, we can indeed only come to this conclusion.

The battle of the plain of the pillar stones or mounds pertains, itself, the metahistory dear to the druids. The fall of the men out of the hyperborean times also. Contrary to the Christianity itself which, still very recently reaffirmed the historical and not meta-historical or mythical nature, of the fall of Adam and Eve, reported by the Old Testament

The various Schools of thought of the druidism therefore received as one's share a problem posed by the religious phenomenon which is communal to them: the phenomenon of the myth, rule of life in this world, or guide beyond this world. The first and last task of every druidicists is to understand the true meaning of these myths, and not to look at the literal appearance. But the mode of comprehension is, of course, conditioned by the lifestyle of the one who understands, and reciprocally, the inner behavior of the druidicist derives from his comprehension mode.

The experimented situation is primarily an interpretative situation, in other words, a situation where, for the druidicist, the true meaning of these myths and of this Panth-eon comes out, which at the same time also makes his existence, true.

This truth of the meaning, correlative of the truth of the being , truth which is real, reality which is authentic, such is the goal of any druidic research as regards mythology or Panth-eon (pleroma).

True druidic exegesis has to transcend the facts of the myths to go back to their origin.

It is a question of discovering the deep original meaning of these myths, i.e., the meaning which, while being the truth, is the essence, and, consequently, the spiritual sense.

Celtic mythology implies a cosmogony and a given anthropology (consequently a civilization and a philosophy). N. B. To recognize that the goal to pursue is the spiritual senses of the myths, therefore means that it can also exist, for these same myths, unspiritual senses. And that between these spiritual meanings and these which are not, there can be there a whole series of gradations leading to a plurality of meanings.

There we find consequently the very definition of any paganism or polytheism.

The myth presupposes a perception of the events on a level other than that of the empirical world.

This metahistory tracks spiritual energies and the higher universes which printed their mark in our world. The myth makes the light descend on earth.

To be druid, it is to conceal the apparent one and to express the concealed one, in other words, to go back to the original and true sense of the myth, of the myth or of the Panth-eon (pleroma).

To search the “Grail “in this case, it is therefore to divert the wording of the myth from its outside or exoteric appearance to make it return to its deep truth. Such a work of spiritual exegesis is as a new birth (see the concept of ategnatus), because the exegesis of the myths or of the Celtic Panth-eon, does not go without the exegesis of the soul and of the mind.

The metaphysical in a strict sense of the term facts (for example the intimate and metamorphic union of the soul and of the matter in the large cauldron of cosmic life, or the pact concluded between the god-or-demons and the men, etc.); happen in this metahistory exteriorized by the myths, and do nothing but show through in the procedure of this world, while constituting there the invisible one of the events, escaping secular empirical perception. Because precisely presupposing this perception of the theophanies that only a druidicist can grasp.

The god-or-demons and the semi-god-or-demons, are perceived as such as only on the level of this metahistory, which describes us the various stages of the descent or of the increase in this world, of the light of the world; the druidic eschatology, more philosophical, describes therefore the increase of it to close the cycle.

It is this metahistory which gives a sense to History.

Without metahistory i.e., without precedence “in Hyperborea or in the Heaven“ and without eschatology, then there is hardly sense of History. It is this to supratangible reality of the sense of History that the notion of cycle is referred.

The plenary perception of the reality of the myths and of the god-or-demons, presupposes, of course, the access to this inwardness of the metahistory as to the events which occur there. And it is something completely different what empirical perception reached in the facts of the outside History. The Celtic myths house a hidden meaning, a spiritual sense, requiring exegesis and spiritual initiation.

Sense remaining even sometimes still to (re) discover, for lack of sufficient evolution of current mankind. The Celtic god-or-demons and their legends are always alive and they will continue to live. As long as the Skies and the Earth will last. Because they conceal signs or guides for each person or groups of persons , present or to come.

We should not mix up this metahistory which falls within pure qualitative time, within the inner time of the soul, and History in a strict sense of the term, the outside History which is the objective and quantitative, homogeneous and continuous time of the world.

Usual notions do not have the same meaning , according to whether you refer to one or the other of these times, according to whether you refer to History or the Metahistory told by the myths.

There are events which were perfectly real, without to have the reality of the events of the empirical History in a strict sense of the word.

For example, the intimate union of soul and matter within the large cauldron of cosmic life. The pact concluded between god-or-demons and men after the fight for the possession of the farmlands: the Talantio (Irish Tailtiu, cf. Rosemartha on the Continent) also known as the 3rd battle of the Plain of pillar stones or mounds. The exile in the next world of the god-or-demons, thanks to the assistance of Belin/Belen/Barinthus (the avatar of Taran/Toran/Tuireann called Manannan Mac Lir in Irish language, Manawyddan ap Llyr in Welsh language, particularly honored in the Isle of Man). And so on. No truly historical real chronology can give the date of these events, supposed concluded before Mankind was fixed on earth (they happened in the time of the preexistence of men). The druids therefore recognized very early, beyond the sensed existence of the god-or-demons, the spring of life and cosmic abundance from where they result. From where are also resulting the soul of the world and this world of the 5 senses (that of the mother cosmic great goddess-or-demoness) to whom the individual souls are associated. But they had to be released by knowledge or the spiritual exercises (to manage the reunification with the Divine One).

The main element which differentiated the former druidism from the other prechristian religions was indeed its belief in a higher Being, true cauldron of life and cosmic plenty , symbolized later by the notion of “Grail “.

According to the primordial druids, this higher Being ruled over the universe by means of many subordinate deities; various facets of the diamond of its personality (subordinate but non-equal to it, in power as in status) therefore acting as secondary causes or intermediaries; occupying and controlling the material bodies to which they had been assigned.

This is why, when a gutuater druid or a gutumater priestess called upon a river for example, this invocation in fact was not intended for the river itself, but for the deity who resided in it.

That, of course, had led the primordial druids to consider that every manifested action, the quivering of a branch, the fall of a leaf, the movement of the clouds… was the action of an intelligence or of a will:

a deity with a message of the Fate or Tokad. To study then to interpret these messages (labarum) was the great business of the former druids.

The cosmic cauldron (par-god) did not have only the traditional powers of a god-or-demon, it also contributed concretely to the life as well as an inexhaustible reserve of energy…… The basic elements of any life are the energy symbolized by fire and water. Before this world is born, fire existed in a pure state (aedus). After the birth of the world, there was a mixture with the other elements, particularly water, therefore degradation, and it is in this “cosmic soup “that the first forms of life appeared.

It is from there that the soul is resulting, the anamone, as an air bubble going up to the surface. Then it seeks its way through the various vegetable or animal stages, up to human form. By doing this it obtains its first degree of autonomy: the ability to decide what is true and what is false , right and wrong.

The smallest sphere of existence - physical life - contains as many truths as untruths , and Man is more or less free to choose the way in which he will balance his life between the two. As Man crosses the various stages of his existence, he moves away gradually from the sphere in question, and enters little by little the increasingly luminous spheres. In other words, goes towards an increasingly large union with the source of life and cosmic energy which is the Big Whole. His progress in this direction depends on his actions.

Approximately, very approximately, a super-spiritualizing or super-hominizing action, constitutes a step towards this cosmic cauldron (a regressus uterum) and a contrary action a step backwards, towards the Andumnon or Non-World.

When a very great sinner (i.e., to take over the ancient druidic terminology, somebody having really always made the opposite of the basic maxim: “ to reverence the gods, to abstain from wrongdoing, and to be a man, a true one“) dies; he returns in this world here on earth , which is that of the mother cosmic great goddess-or-demoness ; after a short stay in the non-world of the andumnon or anderodumnon, to a stage in relation with his behavior in his past life.

The druids indeed believed that a man reincarnates in the body resembling more his last personality. In the event of reincarnation on this earth and not in the other world, of course, which was not always the case, far from it.

This reincarnation due to the weight of his bran, possibly was renewed until he ends up reaching the sphere of the Vindomagos or Mag-Meld, where he could quietly complete purifying himself. Before gradually rising in the heavens and among stars to melt himself in the cosmic cauldron of energy at the end of a certain time. Symbolically these three spheres were compared with the earth, the clouds and the sun. The cauldron of life and plenty was represented by the sun.

Man lives on earth, but constantly attains the steps of the Heaven. During his existence, Man must therefore aspire to join the heavens. On his death, he went in the clouds. The clouds or the mist at the horizon on the sea, they were the soul/minds of the dead who, because of their imperfections, had not been able to go beyond, and to reach the sun or the stars.

Vindomagos, Mag Meld, Aballomagos, and so on, were the names given to this other world.

This next world was a stage or a way station for the mortals having to complete, their purification.

The universe was a gigantic cosmic hopscotch where man went up from square to square, to reach his goal, reintegration in the original cosmic cauldron (in a way a regressus uterum). His progress could be accelerated, or on the contrary delayed, according to the cases (because unlike the Christian theories on the soul, the druids believed, indeed, that man can sometimes, but in a very exceptional way, some cases each century, to fall down on a lower level of development).

We need in this respect being wary of the interpretation made of this travel of the souls after death by the scholiasts of Lucan who understood nothing there.

Below.

ORBE ALIO: apud antipodas. Hi de metapsihei (sic) senserunt, et euntem ad corpus in tribus elementis purgari dixerunt. In igne in perusta, in aere in temperata, in aqua in frigida. Vel alium orbem vocat alia corpora digniora vel indigne apud nos. Fuit enim sentencia, animas in comparibus stellis positas. Et descensus per cancrum. In planetis vero pro diversitate eorum hauriebant diversa. In corporibus tandem pro merito quedam cicius celum petebant, quedam de corpore in corpus transeunt, donec firmamento consecuti resipiscant.

ORBE ALIO: on the other side of the world. Here what they thought in connection with the metempsychosis, and they said that one must be three times over purified before entering a (new) body. As for one’s ardor through combustion, one’s air through a moderated heat, as for one’s water through the cold. Or then they call another world the fact of going in bodies worthier or less worthy than those of ours here below.

This sentence means perhaps the souls rested then in stars of comparable nature that they. Then went down again through Cancer. While growing rich through these planets by various elements according to their needs and their nature. Finally, after having entered new bodies certain ones reached more quickly the heaven according to their merits while others continued to go from a body into a body until they too reach the firmament.

N.B. For Henry Lizeray commenting on the sacrifices dedicated to Crom and Bel it would be the sun which would play the role of the planets evoked by the scholiast of Lucain.

It would be the open mouth towards which precipitate, after a more or less duration, all beings having a soul, in order to be renovated and made again in a purer form.

The Crom of our Irish brothers is Cronos, i.e., Time we have said. As religions are only symbols, people sacrificed victims to Crom by analogy with the Time which consumes all, edax rerum. People recognized the same disposition to Bel, the sun of spring, because the word bel means mouth [mistake of Henry Lizeray].

What it should rather be supposed therefore it is that, from the clouds, man therefore reached possibly the sun or the stars. Sun or stars were not the ultimate end of his journey. He passed through them to reach an even deeper sphere, deep like a black hole in space, the cosmic cauldron.

Sun or stars were one-way crossing points. Behind the sun man could no longer regress, his destiny, at the same time, was to become that of this fantastic cauldron of plenty and energy.

Comets and shooting stars were regarded by the ancient druids as souls of exceptional beings (of auentieticoi or of awenyddion) on the way towards the stars (going up to the Heaven).

This former druidic design was multidimensional, and it was possible to interpret it according to other possibilities of travel for the soul/minds. This travel of the soul/minds was then represented no longer according to a vertical, but according to a horizontal axis.

In this ancient design of the world, man, on his death, went under Ocean’s waves to reach there the islands in the west of the World. Or then returned on dry land driven towards the shore to live another existence there. Until he manages to get out into the open sea beyond the 3rd wave (symbolic number of course). The one-way crossing point, beyond which he could sail quietly towards Vindo-Magos, Aballomagos, or Mag Meld, the land of joy and peace, or with spectacular but harmless brawls as in the films with John Wayne, in the bar or in the saloon. Where he completed preparing his return within the cosmic cauldron to melt himself there in its boiling cosmic and vital energy.

This horizontal or lateral view of the soul progress was especially widespread at the druids of the Celtic countries located in the west; this way of conceiving the things being due, of course, to their situation facing the vastness of the Ocean which borders the coasts of Western Europe. In both cases, the druids of this time hardly looked at the possibility of a downward movement of the souls (relapse). They were worried especially only about ascent(to reach or exceed remained their key words).

The cauldron of cosmic plenty and life that was for them the Big Whole, was at the same time above or behind, but never below. There was no hell in a strict sense of the term in this religion. The amount of negativity (or of negative forces) cumulated by man in his life (bran) being limited, it could not be punished by an unlimited punishment like the hell of the god of love of the Christians in the way of “Saint “Augustine… man had, at certain times of his process of incarnation to pay off his debts, that’s all!

The beauty of the druidism, it is that, according to it, each man, whatever the evil he may have done at first sight, will be able to also reintegrate the Big Whole; that each rebirth in the other world or in this one, is a step, moreover, towards this regressus uterum.

The henotheistic God-or-demon of the druids ( Gaelic de dhruadh, mu dhe tar gac nde) is therefore, on the one hand, the Universal Including Everything symbolized by the cauldron of plenty and life, called Grail later; of which human individual anamone is only a divine fire tear.

On the other hand, the gods or demons who made themselves known by their people (their people of brothers because resulting too, for the majority of the people of the great primordial wizard and chief of the clan, the Nemet Hornunnos according to the Irish legends, and speaking well the same language according to Diodorus of Sicily ). By making peace with it and in giving up to them the enjoyment of the land.

The Celtic god-or-demon is therefore a polymorphic god-or-demon, but also a god-or-demon of peace which left the men free (autonomous) on earth.

This concept of god-or-demon who is not named (Strabo, Geographia III, 4,16) strictly similar to the El Elyon of the Bible, was specific to the pagan world, of course. It is therefore necessary now to look a little further into this notion and especially in the history of this incarnation on earth of the various avatars of the Divine one.

This history is made at the same time of events and words closely united between them.

N.B. The Irish medieval bards freely painted a bleak picture of the death of our great national hero, the hesus Cuchulain, by making it an incredibly dark and shady drama, what his original legend, of course, was not.

True Celtic minded people with their gaesa show in reality the same OPTIMISTIC AND ACTIVE FATALISM THAT WHICH CHARACTERIZED THE VIKINGS WITH THEIR GAEFA.

The broad outlines of our destiny are overall immutable but the details (our way of dying, the speed of our accession to heaven, etc.) can vary because the gods who are the assistants of the Fate, are virotutis, anextiomarus, iovantucarus, contrebis, dunatis, toutatis, and others, secondary causations.

From the birth of this world to this new ceaseless (pro) creation which is salvation in this world and in the other one, the same solidarity of the higher Being is spread and causes to make his life and his sovereignty shared with the men.

The incarnation of this divine message took place in the literal sense of the word (Sanskrit avatar) within the history of the men and the very knowings have the responsibility of making the divine block plan with regard to this world (and its total intrinsic solidarity with the divine one) known.

Only the authentic behavior of the historical or mythical druids (the druidiactio) is sacred teaching, i.e., to be meditated. The behavior of the historical, or mythical, druids, as such, fulfills, in and for the tradition, a completely specific function. The druidism remains in its doctrines, its life and its worships, and it hands down by the way to each generation, everything it is itself, everything it knows.

! ----- ------------------ -------------------- -------- !

For some time, some writings were revealed, which often claim authority of such or such Celtic (Welsh or Breton) tradition; but convey in fact speculations or an imagination very far away from the spirit and from the simplicity of the only true great primordial tradition which is Indo-Europeanism, or from the new druidism.

These mysteries or these secrets, which even sometimes claim to be, “traditional “ or “druidic “(example: the false triads) are in fact apocryphal texts. They pique curiosity of a certain number of our contemporaries, always enthusiast with sensational one. Known generally for a long time, but gone out of use because of their poor interest, these triads of Britain are often presented to the public as true discoveries (the discovery of a Welshman named Iolo Morgannwg).

However it is by referring to authentic history that neo-druidism unceasingly has to check the straightness of its convictions. This authentic history remains thus the source of its permanent youth. The neo-druidism always had and still has as a higher rule, the respect of historical truth, jointly with that of Tradition. Experience shows particularly what can be made with tradition when it is detached from historical reality that it contributes to feeding and making comprehensible. In France, starting from and in the name of this tradition, did not cease multiplying mercantile or intellectual swindles type Breton Goursez or Gorsedd, druidic college of Gauls (journal Ar Gael), druidic group of Gauls (journal : Message), druidic School of Gauls, etc.

The druidism should not be anything. And especially not a new superstition, moreover. The druids of today have the duty to take care of the straightness of the interpretation of the action or of the word of the gods or demons, such as it appears in all these facts of Celtic civilization, in the History and in the tradition.

For that, they benefit not only from the work of the exegetes and of the historians of religions, but also from what the attentive study by the dagolitoi (believers) perceived from the word or from this epic of the god-or-demons, which was handed down to them in Ireland.

Since these facts of Celtic civilization have to be read and interpreted in light of the mind which gave rise to them; we must not, in order to discover exactly the meaning of these facts, to pay less attention to the contents and to the deep unity of the whole Celtic history; in view of the alive tradition of druidism and of the analogy with the other pagan spiritualities.

It is up to the exegetes to endeavor, according to these rules, to fathom then to still more deeply expound the meaning of these historical witnesses, so that, through their, in a way preparatory, studies, the judgment of the current druids matures.

That is particularly true for the ordinary and usual practice of the moral magistracy practiced by the druids.

Magistracy in which the druidic knowledge on all the levels of responsibility (theology, deontology, and so on) is developed.

To this current teaching, as regards the faith and the deontology (ethics), the druidiactio expounds, the believers must bring the approval of their mind, but in all honesty , and in whole autonomy, of course. On reflection and not through constraints.

Contrary to what happens in Islamic land where apostasy is severely suppressed (it is true that the isolated initial Meccan verse stating that there should not be null constraint as regards religion (2,256) was quickly abrogated by many Medinan verses exactly stating the opposite and particularly that known as “of the sword” 9, 29) which abrogates at once 122 of them let us say more tolerant.

Without claiming to be exhaustive in a field which is in itself immense, we want only to try to circumscribe some of the operations through which we endeavor to discover in a text, a meaning non-accessible to an immediate and naive reading. Meaning called , according to the times and the authors, “hidden “ “latent “ “true “ “profound “.

Is this search of a meaning other than the apparent meaning founded? If we look only at our experience, it seems well that yes. All, we are aware that it can exist in the language another level of meaning than the immediate level.

As of Antiquity, we see appearing frames of reference which make it possible to understand differently, legends which were, however, perfectly readable without that. It is the mode of reading which one described as allegorical or exegetical. The interest of this system is to provide a grid of which the application to a given text makes it possible to discover a higher level of coherence, which renews comprehension of it. A little in the manner of these drawings popularized by the Gestalt psychology (German Gestaltpsychologie), where the apparent image at first glance can suddenly swing to make another appearing (for example the famous Rubin vase); or as a message written with the invisible ink can appear in the margins of the text.

Witnessed as of the 6th century before our era, the allegorical reading experimented varied forms. Traditional classifications distinguish four types of them, according to the reference mode chosen to interpret the mythological accounts.

Specialists speak thus initially about exegeses of the physical type. This one consists in viewing in the god-or-demons forces of nature.

Another form of interpretation is the moral or psychological exegesis, which consists in seeing in the god-or-demons symbols of the virtues and of the vices. Open allegories, of course, and which do not ask for a particular effort of reading.

Historical exegesis, sometimes also called realistic exegesis, is more subtle. It seeks the origin of the myths in human events distorted by the tradition. This form of reading will reach its blooming with the Greek Éuhemerus, around the 3rd century before our era. For the latter, the god-or-demons would be only deified human beings.

The exegetical approach is based on the postulate the text refers truly to a former reality of which writer would have been only the more or less faithful historian. This type of reading caused negative reactions in Socrates and Plato, who reckon that people have better do than to seek explanations of the rationalist type to mythical stories. Such a reaction nevertheless was exaggerated, because it amounts throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Other modes of allegorical reading will develop. Metaphysical and religious exegesis. But we could identify others of them. The principle, in fact, is always the same one. It is a question of posing a reading context, likely to involve a translation of the primary meaning in another reference area, and to institute a recurrence of meaning, different from the meaning given by the immediate sense. But it is especially psychoanalysis which, in our time, gave a new impetus to the research of the hidden sense under the apparent meaning. Through the ambition it posts, to be posed in total interpretative system, it asserted oneself as a modern druidism, and took over, in a certain way, of the mass religious systems. Following the example of these, it draws its effectiveness from the reputation its popularization involved in our civilization, and inside which its concepts tend to be considered as absolutely true. What enables it to cure the evils that its own knowledge generated (a little as the exorcist succeeds indeed in expelling the demons of the patients who believe in that).

In these various types of exegesis or allegorical explanation, the primary meaning of the text is seen as a screen; which conceals another truer, more in conformity with reality, meaning.

SOURCES, METHODS, AND PROBLEMS.

In this field (the religion of the Celts), we find diametrically opposed opinions. It will be spoken here about a series of great panceltic personal god-or-demons, and there of an innumerable crowd of local deities without a certain number of great god-or-demons communal to all the Celtic people to summarize all these deities.

There exists even the opinion according to which the Celts would have worshipped in reality one great God or Demiurge, but with very vague contours and attributes, whose person and functions would have been then broken up on contact with the Roman polytheism.

It is therefore essential to be clear about the questions of method, these questions, we will not elude them.

The main sources of our short outline on the druidic religion intended for the young schoolboys of druidism (for the students there exist other subjects of meditation) are not, especially not, the false triads of the medieval Welsh literature or of Iolo Morgannwg; and even less any Atlantis. But the information provided by the classical authors, Greek and Roman in particular. Even also some heroic accounts treated as legends dealing with original mythical time, therefore strongly distorted, in which, on many points, we guess allegories [ insular, especially Irish besides, tales and legends. Editor’s note].

We also have a certain number of archeological documents, which inform us somewhat about the druidic worship, but especially a lot of inscriptions and images, of the Romano-British (or Gallo-Roman) time. This information source is nevertheless difficult to use. The monuments of the Romano-British time reflect a double interpretation. The Roman interpretation, which attributed the appearances of the Greco-Roman god-ord demons to the indigenous deities; the Celtic-druidic interpretation, less noticed, but much more important. It is the approach through which overcome people recognize, confusedly, in the imagery brought by the winners, an anthropomorphic representation of their own god-or-demons to them. The problem is then to find, behind the mask of the Romano-British figurations, the share of the Celtic survivals.

The religion of the Celts, whatever the modifications, even distortions, it underwent, has essentially an Indo-European basis. We should always wonder therefore whether the comparison with the beliefs of the related peoples, could not shed some light, on religious phenomena which are lacking in clearness in the druidic tradition, and sometimes seem incomprehensible to us. It is there a point of method which, it seems, was very often neglected. Thus are explained several failures of authors who intended to be based only on the alone Celtic sources. It should be remembered that we are on a heap of ruins. We can hope to see some contours clearly, only while trying to see the whole from a high point. Let us add the religious comparative literature, including that dealing with non-Indo-European religions (without for all that falling in the stories about the alleged Universal Perennial Great Tradition) and the linguistics. Without forgetting Celtic art itself (coins or others), because it is time that we break finally with a tradition of hypercriticism and agnosticism, which led the commentators a long time to minimize the significance of these essential sources. It should not be forgotten that the Celtic and Romano-British monuments, show, compared to the insular Celtic literature, an unquestionable anteriority, an indubitable precedence. But having said that, and as regards the Romano-British period, it is essential to take into account the milieu of the dagolitoi (believers), who then made these monuments erected. In the eyes of the Romano-British people of Arthur, for the communities of the vici of the Tithe Land in Germany (Agri Decumati), for the farmers of the West or of the Center of continental Celtica, the small holders of rural farms, of the Mediomatrici, Treveri and Triboci; the metaphysical as well as eschatological meaning of these representations, had, of course, left room for much more down-to-earth concerns. Safety of the domain and of the rural community, abundance of harvests.

In older times, Celtic people had expressed on their works of art and their coins, a whole cycle of legends.

But the forced self-effacement of the druids, the disappearance of their teaching; because there was well solution of continuity in the handing down in spite of long death throes, that is undeniable in spite of what the majority of the current neo-druids claim; the invasion of utilitarianism and of conformism, resulting from peace or from prosperity; had obscured for a time these prospects. However, the analysis of as romanized monuments as the pillar of Mavilly and the column of Mainz in Germany *; if

we replace them in their background, and if we compare them with other similar monuments; had informed us that the selection and the voluntary grouping of Greco-Roman images, combined to express indigenous ideas, views, and myths, never ceased. This Celtic interpretation was used from now on to disguise true druidic survivals. Because we can suppose through other evidence; particularly the texts by Ausonius called upon in the previous chapter; that the sanctuaries of springs, being used for prophecy and medicine, placed under the protection of Apollo at least seemingly, a long time were used as asylums to the druids and as a screen to druidism.

* Columns and pillars of this nature were undoubtedly some during the time of independence.

ART.

Celtic decorative art owes nothing to the vegetable models. It is besides basically distant from any realism. The base of its inspiration is of religious order. Based on a relatively restricted repertory of patterns; of which the ones date back to Western or alpine European prehistory and protohistory, others to the decoration of Greek or Etruscan ceramics; it knew how to develop in four centuries, an exuberant and varied decorative style, of which the apparent imagination covers a rigorous conventional structure. The latter proceeds of a true code of signs and symbols, intended to spread, through artistic figurations, some religious beliefs. These as a whole constituted a mixed religion and a theology of compromise and synthesis. We deal with an incipient collective personality, which emerges independently, and tends by itself to unify the regional cultures, in a dynamism which is particular to it, and tends to take, to a certain extent, an interregional , even national, character. The symbolic and religious character of Celtic art is obvious. See the oenochoes of Reinheim or Waldalgesheim in Germany. The Celts have, and in particular with the assistance of their coins, made up a code of signs which enabled them to express their religious beliefs and ideas. As of its origin, the Latenian art often exceeds the magic intention, and appears as the plastic expression of a mythology specific to the Celtic populations. The message expressed thus was, of course, as explicit for the Celtic users, as the representation of the Child laid down between an ox and an ass for us.

The lozenges which appear on the decoration of the fibulas of the 4th, seem to represent the diagram of the female sexual organs, symbolizing the Mother Earth, deity distinct from the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, sovereign, of the Celts and older. Lozenge is a Celtic word besides (lausinca).

According to the French archeologist Jean-Jacques Hatt, the offering of the bread by Rosemartha, and of the egg or of the rooster by Mercury (Lug?), on the column in Mainz; would symbolize the exchange and the conjunction between the fertilizing forces of the Sky and these of the Earth.

COINS.

The minting of the coins concerned, of course, the kings and the lords, but they are the local or regional druids who had in charge the symbolism of them, from where the interest of this field of study.

Admittedly, we know it very well , this field is as vast as restricted: the images are very numerous, but they remain by definition static, and deliver only exceptionally the myth which they imply. The fact remains that it is always the expression which remains most spontaneous, in a country where the language was not written. The gold coins of the Parisii have a particular importance. As from a certain time (2nd century before our era?) after the appearance of the new symbols of wheel, wild boar, lion; the Celtic coins express especially the hope of the agreement of the heavenly and underground deities, for the access of the late to the parallel to our universe which is commonly called Heaven. The same designs are perceptible in the images being reproduced on the coins of the 2nd or 1st century before our era: alliance and dialog desired between the god-or-demons for the balance and the harmony of the cosmos, and the salvation of the souls after death. The coins of the Empire studied by Maurice Bouvier (of the family of Jacqueline Kennedy??) Ajam, show this period was particularly favorable to this kind of survival. You can also observe the appearance, in the place of the dedication altar on the coins of Tetricus II, of the sign in X finished by four points, in a square; (the labarum voice or word of the Fate or Tokade symbolized by the saint Andrew’s cross in Scotland or the cross of saint Patrick in Ireland); common on the coins therefore, and symbolizing the power of Taran/Toran/Tuireann.

Summer partner of Taran/Toran/Tuireann, sharing with her seasonal husband the wheel (also known as labarum) and the lightning, as well as the power over the elements; the representation of the wheeled sidereal deity also exists on the Celtic coins and the Romano-British or Gallo-Roman sculptures.

The most representative coin in this respect is a coin of the Ambiani (ALT 10379), where she appears in the reverse. She is represented naked, on horseback , holding with her left hand a torc and with her right hand a wheel around which a garland of foliage is rolled up, which falls then towards the ground.

Behind this horse, a sphere being prolonged by an undulating flame strikes the ground. Perhaps it is the lightning.

Finally, let's not forget that there are probably on some gold or silver coins of the type BN 7229 from the Veliocasses or from other tribes of the region very stylized representations of the end of this cycle according to druids, namely a giant wolf swallowing the moon or the sun (symbolized by a wheel or even by a horse) then rejecting vegetation, in other words, a new land. A more complete eschatology than that described in the famous poem of the poetic Edda entitled "the Voluspa" but without the war of the gods against each other.

THE CAULDRON OF GUNDESTRUP.

According to the great French archeologist J.J. Hatt which lengthily studied it; this rather mysterious work of art found in 1891 at the bottom of a peat bog in Denmark, and therefore probably of Cimbrian origin; has as a leitmotif the cosmic fight that the air and underground god-or-demons eternally fought the ones against the others , the cosmic fight between the deities of the earth and of the sky.

It is the topic of the fight between air god-or-demon and underground deities, which belongs to the Indo-European mythological core; and that we find in Greek mythology in the fight of the Olympian deities against the Titans, or in Germanic mythology, in the fight of the Aesir against the Vanir.

On one of the plates of the cauldron, we indeed see Taran/Toran/Tuireann, assisted by the indigenous Mars, the latter represented under the features of a Celtic warrior [ other specialists see Cuchulainn there. Editor’s note] throwing the lightning wheel towards the earth, in order to produce rain and to make the springs spouting out. The cauldron of Gundestrup seems to be the witness of a reorganization of the Celtic Panth-eon or Pleroma in the Indo-European sense.Taran/Toran/Tuireann from now on being limited to his role of the sovereign of the Sky and Master of the lightning. From this point of view, the cauldron of Gundestrup seems to be as a monument of druidic orthodoxy, expressing a return to the Indo-European Celtism.

The origin of the Abellinian worships combining the worship of the Sun with the worship of the springs and of the salutary water, goes back to the protohistoric past. Their first symbols go back to the Bronze Age. On one of the plates of the cauldron of Gundestrup, this indigenous Apollo (Abellio) appears in his functions of mediator between Taran/Toran/Tuireann and the Mother-goddess-or-demoness during the mythical conflicts between deities of the Sky and of the Earth. It seems well that the cosmic fights of Jupiter/Taranis, against the underground powers, had in the mind of the Celts a double effect. The fertilization of the ground by the lightning, the release of the dead, and their access towards the universe parallel to ours called “Heaven “.

The dolphin symbolizes the voyage of the deceased person towards this parallel universe of paradisiac nature (located across the Ocean by the images or representations of the time), it is at least what thinks. J. J. Hatt.

“A small character representing the human soul/mind, astride a dolphin, escapes the devouring monsters to sail towards the Celtic Heaven “.

The cauldron of Gundestrup proves that the druids too designed the world as being divided in two hemispheres: higher hemisphere and lower hemisphere, separated by the horizontal line of the ground. From now on the main problems posed by the relationship between the two hemispheres; the basement being at the same time the place of origin of the fertility of the ground, of the wealth, and the place of stay of the dead; dominate the ritual, the ceremonies and the myths, of the druidic religion.

The change of hemisphere done by the god-or-demons and the goddess-or-demonesses, as well as the peregrinations from the one to the other, will be related with the changes in the season. The calendar will be marked out by these changes, and the heroes integrated in the myths and in the annual ceremonies.

What would give us therefore, in the lunisolar calendar of Coligny and if we understand this author well.

1. Descent of the primordial great wizard Hornunnos into the hell: I. Samoni (in October - November, therefore at All Saints' day)?

2. Descent into Hell of our great queen Épona and festival of the fairies of matres or mothers type: I Riuri (Christmas)?

3. Sacrifice of the stag: I Anaganti (in February, at the time of the carnival)?

4. Assumption/Apotheosis of the rigantona Epona: I Atenoux Elembivi (August 15th)?

* They would be therefore there the (imaged) circumstances making the souls/minds of the deceased persons wedged in the anteroom of the Heaven by the weight of their bran, under the leadership of the repellent deities like Gwynn or Donn, to escape it, not downwards (reincarnation on earth) BUT UPWARDS.

THE PROBLEM OF THE INTERPRETATIONS

(to be done).

Specialists call from the Latin word interpretatio, plural interpretationes, the way that each one has to react FACING A SAME FACT OF FOREIGN CIVILIZATION: a statue, image, symbol, myth.

The romanized Celt, the Romano-British, who erects a monument to the master of the sky, illustrated under the features of the wheeled Celtic god-or-demon , but called Jupiter on the stone, what did he have in the head and the heart?*

Didn't the name of Taran/Toran/Tuireann disappear for a long time from his memory? Does his example have to be filled to the case of the survival of the Celtic god-or-demons, to that of the triumphing spread of the Roman god-or-demons, or to both?

Research is particularly fascinating in the case of the Roman god-or-demon and of the Celtic god-or-demon presenting some partial resemblance. And consequently equated the one to the other through an operation it is agreed to call, with Tacitus, “interpretation “ and which covers a complex reality.

The tersest inscription, the most banal figuration, can, on defined conditions, be the occasion of a profitable research. What is important, it is not so much to place under a statue [in any event, the enormous Romano-British or Gallo-Roman documentation remains our most explicit source] a label such as “Apollo “ “Minerva “ or “Hygieia “; it is to reconstruct the thought of the native believer in the presence of these figurations.

The common man of these countries was not familiar of the classical literature; he evoked the deities of old. These images copied from the ancient models, if he named them in his heart, could become, we will see in these pages, our great queen Epona, Noadatus/Nodens, CamulUs. Do we have the possibility of going up to the thought of the indigenous farmer, i.e., all in all to remove the distortion brought by Roman interpretation? Not always, but often.

There exist hopeless cases; for example, that of a document of which the place of origin remains unknown. The first approach to follow in this case is to locate, as exactly as possible, the point of find. It is then advisable to examine the physical, geographical, environment. It is not indifferent that a document was found in the ruins of a villa or a temple, along a road, on the ridge of a mountain, to the accesses of a spring.

The second approach consists in questioning the context, the archeological environment.

The results to which these analyzes can lead are likely to give back all its value to the irreplaceable Romano-British or Gallo-Roman documentation, so wrongfully put down, so easily ascribed to a late time, in an unavowed intention of denigration.

Divine Romano-British (or Gallo-Roman) names appear in four forms.

1.Either the deity is indicated under an indigenous name, without more.

2. Eiher the indigenous name is followed by a Roman name designating a parallel deity**.

3. Or the Roman name precedes the indigenous name.

4. Or lastly the inscription provides only the Roman name.

Certain scientists consider that types 2 and 3 express a major contamination between the druidic deity and the Roman deity. As for the dedications of the fourth type, they would relate to purely Roman god-or-demons, and would consecrate the total obliteration of the druidic god-or-demons.

Other scientists go further. They reckon that the suppression of the clergy as well as the attraction of Roman civilization, shook basically the indigenous religion, and distorted it so much, that it is vain to seek the memory of it in the Romano-British ( or Gallo-Roman) epigraphy. Even the texts where we can read an isolated indigenous name would be unsuitable bringing to us information of quality, as of the moment that they were engraved after the conquest.

Other historians express an opposite opinion.

The official worships, such as that of Rome and Augustus, that of the Capitoline triad , penetrated in the towns, but the rural sanctuaries restore the atmosphere of the indigenous beliefs. The changes announced in the divine names affect the external form of the worships **; is it sure that they change their spirit?

The fact that it is a purely Roman name, does not constitute at all alone a criterion of Romanization. In Bath, certain dedications are addressed to Sulis, others to the Roman Minerva. Will we be maintaining that the last ones would concern a Roman goddess-or-demoness, others a Romanized Celtic goddess-or-demoness, or fairy? Sul and Minerva designate in that case only the same divinity.

[Same phenomenon on the continent. In Bourbon-Lancy certain dedications are addressed to the god-or-demon Apollon, others, more numerous to the god-or-demon Apollo Borbo. Will we be maintaining that the first ones would relate to a Roman god-or-demon, the others to a Romanized Celtic god-or-demon? Apollo and Borbo Apollo designate in this case the same deity **] .

It stands to reason that the Celts; not having felt the need, or not having had time, to work out the imagery of their own god-or-demons; were to be fascinated by the abrupt face to face with the Greco-Roman types brought by the winners. Following what, they tended to keep the plastic topics of the conquerors, in order to figure their indigenous deities. All the question is to know if, while choosing the external shape, they also accepted the core, i.e., the spirit of the Roman religion.

*Same issues besides in Islam. What was in the head of the very first Muslims and therefore of Muhammad himself when they worshipped Allah (the moon ?) who was at the beginning with Hubal (the sun ?) only the most important or the first of the gods in the Pantheon of the Kaaba: henotheism?? Monolatry?? Some philosophical and well thought out monotheism??

** Same problem besides in Islam when to Allah's name is attached a particular attribute designating another Arab god (Ar Rahman for example).

CELTICA OR DRUIDICA INTERPRETATIO (Celtic or druidic interpretation).

From the previous attitude, it is appropriate to distinguish the opposite attitude carefully, that for which druids took the first step. Having taken knowledge of the names and images of the Greco-Roman Panth-eon, they believed to recognize in such or such classical god-or-demon, whose image and name were simultaneously proposed to them, their a long-time abstract, impersonal, or thinly personal deities. The problem is then to find, behind the mask of the Romano-British (or Gallo-Roman) figurations, and which therefore reflect a double interpretation, the share of Celtic relics. Because what is certain, it is that there was, in all likelihood , in the choice of works a deliberate preference guided by the beliefs of the natives. These works constituted in their eyes a means of better expressing their religious ideas. The process is perhaps at the origin of the Celtic interpretation of the Greek works of art, which begins very early, as of the 5th century before our era.

The Celts, of before the Roman conquest, then the Gallo-Romans, and then the Romano-British, assimilated, by diverting them from their primary meaning, Hellenic, Italic and Eastern images and concepts, for the sole purpose to better express their own beliefs. This data proves to be paramount and of the greatest importance.

It was spoken initially about Roman interpretation, but the Celtic interpretation of the images and even of the concepts from Greece, from Italy, from the East, was much older and more largely widespread. It is from there that it is possible to grasp the Celtic one through the more or less distorted or adapted Greek or Latin one.

This second initiative, which takes place afterwards (it is later than Caesar), is of a much more general than the first one, application. For the simple reason that the natives outnumbered the immigrants in a crushing way, especially in the century which followed the conquest. If we make a point of avoiding any ambiguity, it is advisable to apply to this second initiative a particular appellation, for example that of “druidic interpretation “. Because it is not the Celtic god-or-demons who became Roman, it is the Roman god-or-demons who became Celtic and they are the druids who made the assimilation.

Perhaps, the formula is too absolute, as any general principle, but it matches at least usual reality. The Romanized Celts of the time were themselves very conscious, sometimes, of these interpretations, since three times, on the continent, the indigenous Jupiter is called “son of Taran/Toran/Tuirean “ (Taranucnus (inscription of Scardonne, Bockingen and Godramstein).

Celtic interpretation consists in the use by the Celts, for their own usage, of Greco-Roman images and even of concepts or words, to express their own religious ideas. This kind of transposition is at the same time oldest and most widespread. It is also most invaluable for our comprehension, because it constitutes a true bridge.

The Celtic myths and beliefs therefore did not disappear. At the beginning of the 4th century, their figuration is only Hellenized. The association on a vase of Alesia, of scenes of the bacchic thiasus, and of hunting for the stag, shows that the farmers of the county compared to the bacchanalia the ceremonies of their Celtic Carnival. Is it necessary to see in this fact the result of the influence of druidic circles opened to the Greek culture, but faithful to the Celtic religious traditions?

The fact is that we will see the druids reappearing at the end of the 3rd century and at the beginning of the 4th. And as we will see it in connection with a text by Ausonius, the druids of the time of the Tetrarchy and Constantine, seem well to have been very open on the World, and to have known the Greek language. See the anecdote of Lucian of Samosata about Hercules/ Ogmius.

Symphorian, whose name means “ accompanying “ i.e. “suiting“or “useful “ was the son of the so-called Faustus and Augusta, and belonged to the first Christians of the town of Autun. He would have been martyr in the reign of Marcus-Aurelius, around the year 180. It will be noted that the first martyrs in Lyon perished in 177. This account therefore poses many problems of credibility as usual, Christians never having been very worried by the factual truth of the things.

Here in short what his legend says to us.

Symphorian meets a procession walking a statue of Cybele. The young man from a good family makes fun of the popular procession of farmers escorting the Virgin mother of the god-or-demons; he is arrested at once *.

It is the judge Heraclius who conducts the questioning.

- My name is Symphorian. I am Christian.

- Christians are rare hereby. And it is that which gives you the right to make an attempt on the freedom of worship of the others?

- I am Christian. I adore the true God who is in the heavens, not the statues of demon. These, I break them with hammer blows.

- You are not only sacrilege, but also intolerant. Of which city are you?

An officer answers: “from right here and from a noble family “.

- It is that which makes you so arrogant? You are guilty of two crimes: blasphemy towards the god-or-demons and contempt of the Laws.

- Never will I regard this image differently than a trap of the demon.

Symphorian is sentenced to death, is dragged outside the city, and is beheaded *. From the top of the ramparts, his mother urges him in Celtic language: “My son, always think of your god. Today, through a happy exchange, you will pass into the heavenly life “.

N.B. “Nate, nate, Synforiane, memento beto to divo “or “Nati, nati, Synforiane, mentem obeto dotiuo “ according to certain variants of the acts of the martyrdom of saint Symphorian (cf. for example the legendary kept at the University National Library of Turin in Italy under the number 517 (D.V.3)

One of the reasons for the establishment of the alleged worship of Cybele in the darkest depths of countrysides was the previous existence of a worship paid to the place mothers goddess-or-demonesses, and of a more general devotion to the indigenous great mother goddess-or-demoness. This Celtic deity of complex appearance was equated sometimes with the one sometimes with the other of the Greco-Roman deities, and could, in this way to be introduced easily into clothing of this Eastern great goddess-or-demoness **

It is likely that Cybele did not supplant the deity or the guardian goddess of the Celts in question, at the same time sovereign, celestial, quarrelsome, but that she revived her, in her unit but also in all her sovereignty.

Everything also contributes to showing that the egregore of the Arvernian people, the teutatis of the Arverni, took Mercury’s figure after the conquest. The Greek sculptor Zenodorus worked out of him a monumental statue, intended for the high temple of the City. This colossal work, cast in bronze, cost forty million sesterces, and shows the economic power of the Arverni who ordered a similar statue, and makes a sculptor coming from abroad, a sculptor of whom they financed the work for ten years.

Celtic interpretation showed some hesitations before to lastly designate by a Roman god-or-demon the primitive teutatis. If it is true that, in a very general way, Mars was selected, an appreciable number of nations or tribes chose in favor of Mercury. In a way , Mercury is a regional alternation of Mars. Hence the observation of the “commentator of Bern “ is checked when, glossing the text by Lucan, he says to us in substance: “For the ones Teutates is Mars, for the others it is Mercury “. Such characteristics suggest that, under the label of Mercury, our ancestors ascribed to this god-or-demon complex attributions. Of which the ones agree with certain functions of the Roman Mercury, while the others concern old beliefs without relationship with the Roman religion. The originality of the Celtic Mercury becomes still clearer in light of various symbols which accompany, in an unexpected way, some of his figurations.

Initially, it is necessary to note the presence of the ram-headed snake, or of the ordinary snake which is the simplification of it.

A relief of Neris-les-Bains, shows a Mercury sitting, holding his right hand the purse and, in the left hand, holding in all quietness an enormous ram-headed snake. The tail of the monster appears driven into the ground, while the head is curiously directed towards… Mercury’s purse.

One would be wrong to regard the monster as an enemy of the god or demon; the circumstances of the figurations invite on the contrary to recognize in the snake a friend and a beneficial being.

Resulting from the wet depths of the ground, the snake is in relation with water: the monument of Neris was precisely withdrawn from a thermal well, close which the statue could have been installed in the beginning. The snake is at the same time symbol of fruitfulness: apparently born from the ground, which provides him the lodging and is used as a refuge by it, it takes part of the nature and in the essential quality of the earth. For this reason, its presence at the side of Mercury, a dispenser of abundance, is easily conceivable. It is precisely the meaning ascribed to the snake by the indigenous populations which involved an adaptation of the classical type of Mercury in the Romano-British or Gallo-Roman folk art. This familiar to the druids, design, results in the highlighting of the caduceus as of the two snakes which are the spectacular ornament of it.

Minerva, Venus, the Fortune, the Victory, are only occasional partners, inspired from the Graeco-Latin imagery. Under their features is dissimulated, in a more or less veiled way, the true one, the only Celtic partner of Mercury. The Strange dimensions of the horn of plenty, carved in the center of the low-relief, focus on the extent of the gifts that the goddess-or-demoness, or the good fairy if it is preferred, is ready to grant, however, that the rudder imposed on the globe points out her role of a she-driver of the destiny. This “Fortune “is very close to the Celtic mother-goddess-or-demoness in general, and to the usual Mercury’s partner.

Behind the Roman name of “nymphs “ there are still the Mothers who are hidden: they appear in characteristic triad.

Doesn't the insistence with which the bacchic scenes are represented on the tombs indicate that the followers imagined the life of the hereafter as an endless banquet ? Where men would taste the divine beverage, while the gracious spectacle of the steps of dance and the hearing of a lively music, would come to charm the senses of the happy fews and to get a higher bliss to them? [Editor’s note. See the Irish design of the other world, the music of the Sidh, etc., and the decisive sentence of Lucan on the small carnal streak of life after death. The words used by him are indeed very clear: “regit idem spiritus artus. “ We see badly how this sentence, “the same soul/mind governs the limbs “could refer to an incorporeal existence. The soul/mind reappears, of course, in another world, but always united with a body].

The great French archeologist that ist J. - J. Hatt also brought together, not Ogmius and Orpheus, like Henry Lizeray, but Hesus and Orpheus. Because the legend of Orpheus comprised the survival of his head, after his assassination. Virgil, the Georgics IV, 523-527 [Virgil who was besides, let us remind it, of Celtic origin and whose grandfather who was a druid, still spoke Celtic language]. “ Even then, when torn from the marble neck his head went rolling down the mid-eddies of Oeagrian Hebrus, the very voice and chill tongue cried Eurydice! ah poor Eurydice! as their life ebbed away: Eurydice! the banks re-echoed all down the stream.“

It would be here the Celtic interpretation of the legend of Orpheus, the head-god-or-demon Esus being compared to the head of Orpheus shouting the name of Eurydice. It is probable that the singular low-relief (Esperandieu I, 36), discovered in Montsalier, and currently exposed to the Museum of Marseilles, represents an episode of the legend of Esus. Indeed, we see there, on the right, a human head posed on a base, while on left a woman is framed, carried by two warriors.

There also existed a Dionysiac interpretation of the chthoniAN myths of the Celts, and that since the 5th century before our era. Perhaps Hesus was sometimes interpreted in Dionysos by the Greeks, for two reasons.

The first because of the double birth of Dionysos (triple for the Hesus Setanta known as Cuchulainn among Irishmen).

The second because Dionysos is the only Greco-Roman great god-or-demon, who is usually represented in every age of life: sometimes a child, sometimes a young man, sometimes an adult, sometimes an old man. However Hesus is the reincarnation of a much older Hornunnos, our great primordial Shaman. At least always if we understood this researcher well who adds:

“It is currently difficult to specify what meant, beside Taran/Toran/Tuireann, the presence of Mithra. An indigenous interpretation of the latter, as mediator and savior, god-or-demon, is likely. This Celtic interpretation also worked with respect to incipient Christianity, the Bible and of the Old Testament, at least in their Christian popularization.

And this, in all the fields. An example: the famous Eve and Adam's apple. In the Old Testament myth, nothing, but then absolutely nothing, says to us that the fruit in question was an apple. The equation “fruit of the tree of knowledge = apple “was made in the West, and constitutes obviously one of the many pagan influences having worked on original Christianity.

* In 1766 still in the country of Voltaire the knight of La Barre was tortured to death for a similar reason (blasphemy) by the distant successors of Symphorian come to power.

** What is there in the head of the Mexican farmer who adores with the worship of hyperdulia Our Lady of Guadalupe??

God only knows. But if he is really our father to all and the only true God in the world, then he could not be jealous and can only always love his children whatever their errors (Allah Jehovah Buddha or Vishnu).

INTERPRETATIO GRAECA.

For the record, we will also mention this variant, often mixed up with Roman interpretation. The most typical case of a meeting, or more exactly of a false meeting, between Celtic interpretation and Greek interpretation, is that of the famous passage of Lucian in connection with Ogmius. The unknown druid explains to him that among Celts Hercules is called Ogmius and that… etc. But there are others of them.

An antique legend of Marseilles, intended to make up a defeat of the city facing the Celtic tribes surrounding it, is indeed the first account of the interpretation into Athena (Minerva), of the warlike aspect (Catubodua) of the great cosmic mother goddess-or-demoness of druids.

“….But after a time, when Massilia [today Marseilles] was at the height of distinction, as well for the fame of its exploits as for the abundance of its wealth and its reputation for strength, the neighboring people suddenly conspired to destroy the very name of Massilia, as they would have united to put out a fire that threatened them all. Catumandus, one of their petty princes, was unanimously chosen general, who, when he was besieging the enemy's city with a vast army of select troops, was frightened in his sleep by the vision of a witch-looking woman, who told him that she was a goddess, and after this he made peace with the Massilians. Having then asked permission to enter their city and pay adoration to their gods, and having gone into the temple of Minerva, and observed in the portico the statue of the goddess whom he had seen in his sleep, he suddenly exclaimed that it was she who had frightened him in the night; that it was she who had ordered him to raise the siege; then, congratulating the Massilians that they were under the care, as he perceived, of the immortal gods, and offering a necklace [ in Latin torquis, a torc ] of gold to the goddess, he made a league with them forever…“ (Justin, epitome of the Philippic history by Trogue Pompey XLIII, 5,4 and following).

A little further it is said that the citizens of Marseilles ; informed of the taking of Rome by the Celts; would have given all the gold and all the silver of the Treasury as well as of the private individuals; to help the Romans to pay the ransom required by the Celts of Brennus (Justin, 43). Admirable generosity!

Most probable is that, if Catumandus entered Marseilles, it was while leading his troops, and that if the inhabitant of Marseilles delivered all that they had, it was to pay him, and not to pay the ransom of Rome.

The sentence “Having then asked permission to enter their city and pay adoration to their god-or-demons.... “ is, of course, a little strange, but the account remains essential about this subject.

It remains to be seen what the result of all these interpretations was, and if it is possible, in certain cases, to go up from the Christian and Roman medieval of the Late Empire thought, to the ancient druidic thought.

We will see that YES, in many cases, but it will be necessary for us to then carry out a whole work of recovery (see this word) of our ideas.

In mythology, the Fate or Tocade speak to the men in the way of men. In order to interpret these myths well, it is therefore necessary to be attentive to what the human transcribers really wanted to affirm, as to what the Fate agreed to express us, through the word of his god-or-demons (labarum).

! --- ----------- ---------------- ----- -------- ---------- !

It is necessary to take into account , in order to discover the intention of the druids having codified all this; the conditions of their time and of their culture, the literary genres in common use at the time (courting, raids, genealogies, etymologies, funeral elegies, etc.) the manners of feeling, of speaking or of telling; current in this time.

Because it is in quite a different way that truth appears in historical or meta-historical texts, in prophetic or poetic texts, even in other modes of expression. In all these literary texts or these literary genres sublime lessons on the Fate, or a beneficial wisdom about human life, are found.

These mythological texts therefore have to be read and interpreted in light of the spirit which presided over their composition. It is also always necessary to take into account the various senses the same myth can take on. A myth can have a moral sense, constitute an allegory, or to have an anagogic sense.

In short, it is always necessary to take into account the other mythological texts or traces, to interpret one of them.

N.B. The metahistorical safekeeping is finished since the concealment of the god-or-demons brothers of (because resulting too from the Nemet Hornunnos our great primordial wizard), but it was not completely clarified yet. It remains to the druids of today to develop even more all the impact of it.

In this mythological handing in, the druids of today also find their spiritual food and their force. Because they do not see here only a human word, but also the voice of the Fate or Tocad. Its word, symbolized by the labarum, Christianized later in Saint Andrew’s cross in Scotland or Saint Patrick’s cross in Ireland.

INTERPRETATIO ROMANA.

The Romans left the preconceived idea that the god-or-demons of the Barbarians matched those of their own Panth-eon, and they set in motion the search of pre-established “parallelisms “. “Roman interpretation “consists in expressing in Greco-Roman words or images, for the Roman or Romanized dagolitoi (believers), the Celtic religious designs. It is not always very happy besides. The example came from Caesar himself, who left us a very incomplete draft of the Celtic religion, while giving only the names of some Roman divinities.

Tacitus observed the same attitude with regard to the Panth-eon of the Germanic ones. But, while proceeding so, he recognized that the Romans “do interpretation “. i.e., they designate and conceive each god-or-demon, according to the Roman god-or-demon who seems to them to offer greatest affinity with the foreign god-or-demon considered. The interpretatio romana made by the commentators of the texts by Lucan (Bernese scholia) is (alas!) contradictory enough.

According to the ones the Teutates are Mercury there, according to the others some Mars. Hesus is sometimes interpreted there in Mars, sometimes in Mercury and Taran/Toran/Tuireann is presented there as a Dis Pater having the functions of Mars.

The Mars of Great Britain was not the Roman Mars simply transplanted in Great Britain. His existence matched the common name given to many local and regional indigenous deities, presenting function identities and a real community of features, all strongly established in their background. This Mars is called “deus patrius Mars conservator “, savior national god-or-demon, in an inscription coming from Osterburken, in Germany, in the area of the Limes (Frontier). This Mars patrius conservator is, undoubtedly, the pre-Roman “Mars “. He is regarded as patrius, god-or-demon of his forefathers, by C. Securius Domitianus, probably of Trevirian origin.

While designating the Celtic Jupiter as the president of the things of the sky, Caesar employed, by chance, a rather happy expression, since it translates the paramount character of this deity.

It is not the same thing when he dealt with the indigenous “Mars “ in whom the conqueror recognized nobody else only the god-or-demon of war. But an analysis, even fast, of our documentation, makes us discover in the Celtic Mars, with so multiple names, not only the war patronage, but also varied aptitudes, without relationship with the fights. The problem arising as it happens is therefore the following one: to distinguish essential quality, through which this god-or-demon could be called upon for apparently different reasons, i.e., to justify this variety of functions, and to find a clear and reasonable explanation to it.

The definition which limits the Celtic “Mars “in this particular role, lets escape a big part of the reality.

This intellectual position, which is the work of officers, travelers, historians, or simple Roman immigrants, is the only one which deserves to be called truly Roman interpretation.

INTERPRETATIO CHRISTIANA (Christian interpretation).

Particularly important in Ireland (see the Irish manuscripts), but also on the continent.

The Christian elites too knowingly proceeded besides, such interpretations, in order to Christianize at the most, the god-or-demons and the places, the festivals and the habits.

It is particularly interesting in this respect to study the life of the more or less legendary saints, because that brings invaluable indications to us on the personality or the worship background of the Celtic, and therefore druidic, god-or-demons, having been previous to them.

An example, the case of the druidic god-or-demon called “roudianos “. Become Rudianus Mars in Latin in the interpretatio romana, and who underwent still afterwards, if we may say, a second, Christian that one, interpretation, which brought him closer to the archangel Michael. To understand the deep sense of this adaptation, it is necessary to banish from our mind the thought, usually expressed, that the Church would have liked “to substitute “purely and simply a Christian worship for a pagan worship. The intention of the Church, specified well by the edict of 435, was initially to ensure the destruction of the pagan temples. Then to set up the Christian worship, in order to wash of any stain the places profaned by the presence of the idols (sic).

To achieve this purpose fully, it was suitable the new sanctuary was erected on the exact site of the old one (what archeology checks). And it was skillful, in addition, to choose among the Christian saints, one of those whose “aptitudes “were more or less in harmony with the pagan worship.

To a certain extent, the personality of the saint honored with a dulia worship in the new Christian sanctuary thus brings an indication on that of the pagan god-or-demon who was previous to him in the place and for whom it was rather some hyperdulia in this case.

The burning wheels and discs known as “of saint Pantaleon “(wheels surrounded by burning straw) are never also but the Christianization of this ancient pagan rite. Just like these of the heights of Marcusberg, close to Trier, these of Sierck, these of Thionville, these of the Poitou, of the Alsace or of the Black Forest in Germany at the time of Saint John’s feast.

THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE GRAIL.

We will gather under this name, in order to better analyze them, the medieval legends dealing with the quest for the Grail itself, but also everything it is agreed to call “Matter of Britain “, “Arthurian cycle “ etc. etc. We saw Zeus with Greek mythology, causing then protecting the initiation of the heroes, because the men were necessary to the preservation of his empire; let us listen to the Celtic legend now telling us about the finality of Mankind. Because the legends of the Round Table (from the name of the table occupying the center of their celicnon) constitute in reality a mythology put in harmony with esoteric Christianity; this being concluded by the redemption myth with the Quest for the Holy Grail.

See the lady of the Lake leading Lancelot to the court of the famous Arthur in order to make him crowned knight, he does not have a name, he will even have to wait for his initiation before he is called Lancelot of the Lake; he is pure, all is white, armors, feathers, palfrey,targe, his suit and that of his servants. The lady of the Lake (… a priestess of water?) brings him into the court of the king. But it is the queen Guinevere who becomes his focal point , and who will await for the end of the ordeals.

It will be initially the black knight who defends the ford (a guard of the threshold), then we will have the ten interchangeable knights who defend the entrance of the castle of the Dolorous Guard. There still, a Nereid, Saraide, helps the hero to overcome his enemies who, like the heads of the Lernaean Hydra, were replaced as soon as one as of their fell! The melting of both selves, the human one and the divine one, is told to us in the legend of the miraculous sword broken in two pieces and of which the point leaves blood drops welling up. As by chance, the carrier of the sword is named Elyezer, a name which evokes that of the sun, Helios. Gawain and his friends try in turn to resolder the two pieces of the sword without managing to dot it, what brings this disillusioned remark of Ector de Maris :

“ Cil sont decheus ki a preudoume nous tiennent “. Personal translation (I am not really a specialist in old French) “They will be very disappointed those who consider us for valiant knights.” To what Eli [ez] er answers: “ Preudoume iestes vous tous mais uous ne uous iestes mi si bien gardes comme uous deussies en totes coses “. “Valiant knights, you are, but you did not stay away carefully like you had to do it, from all things ?”.

N.B.Galaat the pure one will resolder the two pieces of the sword without major difficulty and will pass this ordeal victoriously.

Although very strongly Christianized, these legends constitute nevertheless an information source of the greatest importance on our mythology and our Panth-eon or Pleroma.

Let us ask here to the reader the question he must ask, such Perceval in front of the sacred procession: why Celtic literature, if it traces really the rites of a fundamentally “pagan “ society, also was not persecuted?

The answer was given by the Church itself: it drew aside these “vain and frivolous books“ of its houses, but recovered them carefully, thanks to a Christian veneer, rather visible through, but sufficient in a time of generalized ignorance… And even afterwards, since serious doctors let themselves become trapped there. Moreover, all this world went to mass and sought to modify neither the structure of the society, nor that of the Church. Thus the voluptuous nuns, the priests who whisper divine secrets in the crash of the thunder, the fishing kings with a bloody castration, arrived to us without a problem.

To claim that the “Quest for the Grail“ is not Celtic, but Christian, hardly resists fastest reading nor comparisons with the other quests of the Celtic tradition.

They are only “monks “whose main pastime is reading the future, when they are not “false “or “appearance, resemblance “. Ladies entirely occupied making take our heroes having a bath and slipping “between the sheets “. “Chalice “kept by a raped nun who begets the perfect one (Galaat… that joined a historical detail: in the Great Britain of the sixth century, certain Christian groups made the chalice carried by women : the conhospitae). Mysterious silver headed animals, beautiful young girls, carrying sacred objects (for example the grail), that the heroes covet eyes blazing, chapels with walls covered by inscriptions incomprehensible for the layman, bare-chested veiled corpses on silver tables. God-or-demon who is entitled “High Master “and reminds much of the instructor of Taliesin… Let us not speak about a chastity which resembles extremely castration, of these candidates to a pious life who must crawl in caves, raise tomb stones, or to grow visibly. Lastly, and especially, why there would be the least secret about a relic? As far as we know, the relics were venerated very publicly, as the wood or the nails of the cross, the Holy Shroud, and did not blind the believers who were not constrained to the most superhuman exploits before contemplating them. As for the death through ingestion of a host, it oversteps the marks of the most advanced mystical extases.

Moreover, the Christian plating, once discovered, is not one of the least charms of this work to which it adds some strange one and enigmatic one. Another point very interesting for us, curious about late

antiquities, is represented by the extraordinary archaisms that the author (or the authors) quotes naively, or with an explanation he believes rational.

Our authors of the 12th century had only the average culture of their time: they could therefore in no case to know details that only modern archeology made it possible to find, except if they had been preserved before by a folk tradition. But these details abound in our accounts (and once again are not all present in the oldest Irish texts). Let us quote, browsing the pages randomly. The alleys of cut heads, the golden torcs, the sacrifice of the bull, the ritual feast of the coronation, the wine announced as rare, the oath by the god-or-demons, the giants with a mallet or an axe, the palaces without stage, the baptism of Tristan, the sacrifices in a vat. Let us quote, what is even more extraordinary: these names of god-or-demons, of persons, of places, which emerge to the page turn: Mabon = Maponus, Modron = Matrona, Grain = Grannios, Mabonagrain = Maponogrannios, Nimiane/Viviane, etc.

In spite of the excellence of the thesis of the French Pauphilet, Farel, and Marx, the reader will judge through the reading of works that we studied, if it is really (according to the Schools) an “educational or teaching general survey,“ a “search for feeding objects, “ a “Christian or Cistercian exegesis “. There is truth in all that, but the fastest glance puzzles, about these “naked “ ladies who fear the light, about these “giants “with an axe, about these “semblances of hosts “ which bring psychedelic visions, these “virgins “ stretched out on silver tables, these “chalices “ from which a man goes out with a sword inserted “in his side “or a child “with a vermilion face “ goes out, these “white stags “which leap on altars to change oneself there into god-or-demon. It is difficult to accept the naivety of the authors! Chretien or the hypothetical H. de Massey gives emphatic winks to the reader: Morgan is “a goddess “ Guinevere is “the mother of every good “ the dialogs of the heroes are “these of the sun and of the moon “; besides the “Quest “mentions expressly that its Christian getup is only “resemblance or appearance “.

There is nothing mysterious in the Arthurian literature or in the Grail cycle, there is only much work to do there to find the sense of them.

Ireland who underwent no ideological invasion before the fifth century, contains in her oldest texts (datable in their oral fixing, back to the sixth century) the essential. The search and the ordeals, the sacred drama, the cauldron, the lance and the sword, the sacred food and drink, the promises of immortality, the ritual formulas.

Just like the procession of the grail with its “entries or exits “ regulated like a ballet; the festival at Bertilak de Haut-Desert (the green knight), with its laughter which we would say nowadays, “canned “ at the good places; the funerary procession of Lancelot, seen “from a high window “; the funerary boat of Arthur, seen from so far that people who are there are not initially distinguished. Not forgetting the “lay of trot “where the author recognizes straightforwardly his hero is only a spectator to whom it is explained the strings at the end of the drama.

It is therefore necessary, as assumption, to consider a triad: former texts + oral tradition + membership of certain authors to marginal corporations or cultural circles… For the cycle of the Round Table, we may suppose the existence of a literary current (of a fashion) inspired by a kind of academy. Still powerful enough to have kept in writing (or orally) in its records, the essential of the ancient Celtic mythological literature 1).

Reproduction of the quest and of the travel of the god-or-demon, in the beginning reserved to the priests; the journey and the ordeals make people coming to the knowledge of the secret of the god-or-demons; and to the identification of the comrunos (of the initiated person) to his immortal soul. For the most part, to read the Celtic literature, it is undoubtedly to follow the druidic rituals in the forest or the shrines of there are two thousand and a few years.

More precise examples gleaned randomly in the texts.

The Quest for the Holy Grail itself, where our hero, Galaat undergoes the ordeal of the ebullient water and of the burning grave, then sees the ostension.

The force of the former ritual imposed on the author, like in “Perceval “ the night comes suddenly, the druidic wind starts to blow, the heat becomes atrocious, a voice falls from the sky, and nine knights or guards appear. Three of Ireland, three of Gaul, three of Denmark (?) The bed of the dead god-or-demon where a man lies who pretends to be mutilated (“looking sick “ writes the author in old French. All is from now on “semblance “ indeed , what indicates that the author is wary of his own account) arrives carried by four maidens in tears. The silver table is in place; people bring the vermilion veil, the bright lights, the lance which bleeds in the Grail. This epopteia ends in a vision : from the grail leaves a naked and bloody man ( the Christ ?)

The king is healed and Galaat is promoted to the higher rank par excellence; he may contemplate the interior of the Grail after having swallowed the “high meat “ a pretense of host which gives hallucinatory visions. His soul and his body separate (old French “l’ame li ert partie del cors”), and he falls motionless at the foot of the table. He is from now on immortal. The author, who did not understand this theurgy, describes to us Perceval and Bohort believing him dead. From now on the Quest is finished.

No one will see again the grail lifted up to Heaven. “It will never be seen in the kingdom of Logres again when it has not been duly honored “.This indication is probably taken in the manuscripts which inspired the author.

N.B. For more details on this incredible story of Grail and all these “semblances” see the edition of it given by Oskar Sommer from the manuscripts in the British Museum (publication of the Carnegie Institution of Washington).

Jaufre. It is a romance of the Round Table written in Occitan (the language of the minstrels in the South). Some adventures which have only a romantic interest around the end of the sacred drama: the enchantment over the Waste Land is overcome thanks to Jaufre who triumphs over the knight of the cranes, Trigaranus reincarnated shockingly. The affair ends up in a marriage and the sacrifice of five oxen to save Arthur.

Arthur. The succession of Uther is done in Christmas, Christian version of the trinouxtion samoni (All Souls' Day) where the god-or-demons die. Arthur, in the middle of the barons who fail all to do it, manages by chance to extract the royal sword driven in the anvil stone. The barons rumble. He will be crowned only at Pentecost. He chooses his advisers. He begets Mordred (from his not recognized half-sister). Merlin reveals to him, as to the people, his birth, and predicts to him all the disasters to come, destiny that nobody will be able to change; the ultimate cause of it will be the one who will be born on May 1st, another druidic sacred festival, the new sun he had imprudence to beget.

1° What does not necessarily validate the intellectual swindle of the alleged sources of the trickery by the Welshman Iolo Morganwg.

GENEALOGIES AND CHILDHOOD OF THE GOD-OR-DEMONS.

(The mabinogion, or maponiaca in old Celtic language.)

Who are they in the eyes of the Fate (of the Tocade) before their appearance in the world of men, in what they are different from the Fate their father which is inaccessible? It was inevitable that one day or another these questions arise in connection with Taran/Toran/Tuireann, C.M.G.G. (Dana) Lug, Brenos, Ogmios, Abellio, Noadatus/Nodons/Nuada/Llud, Medros, Belin/Belen, the belisama Brigindo, and other supernatural or preternatural entities of this kind.

To all these questions, druids have a perfectly clear answer. With the god-or-demons, the Fate not only gave assistants to himself, he also gave them to us, as protecting or regulating powers, assistants of the implementation of his poetic justice.

The great lesson of druidism, it is the Fate became flesh, to help the Mankind with which he is intrinsically united, in rising again, once again, above its animal origin. This answer is expressed, of course, with some variants, according to considered paganism.

In this divine view, the role of the Fate is not creating, but procreating. He takes part in the matter to create order in the chaos.

The figure of the psychopomp and theotokos (mopatis) C.M.G.G. supplements this process of super - spiritualization of the Matter , this Danu (bia) is indeed the mother of all these god-or-demons.

We must give up representing us in an exact and scientific way the union of Taran/Toran/Tuireann and of the Cosmic mother great goddess-or-demoness Danu (bia), former having also made her, sometimes, a daughter or a wife of subordinate god-or-demon.

Let us summarize.

When times had come in this world, the Fate or Tokad, source of life and abundance, sent his children; the people of cosmic mother great goddess-or-demoness Danu-bia (Taran/Toran/Tuireann, Lug, Brenus, Abellio, Belin/Belen, the belisama Brigindo, Medrus, Ogmius, the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt, etc.). This sending falls under a cyclic prospect of increase of the spirit in the matter. The god-or-demons like Lug, Brenus, the great Hesus (Morfessa in Ireland), Abellio, Noadatus/Nodons/Nuada/Lludd, Ogmius and the others, are of the same nature as the supreme Fate. But they became similar to the men (their brothers) in the cosmic cauldron (the par-God or Pariolllon) in order to be able to be used to them as examples or interlocutors, even as masters or teachers *. In short as labarum of Fate’s will.

The higher being we don’t name (cf. the El Elyon in the Bible), nobody ever saw it, the god-or-demons, them, who were, are, and will be, eternally within its magic cauldron, yes. Theses sons of the Fate may help us to approach it. They are personal god-or-demons, resulting from an impersonal (a cosmic energy source) god-or-demon. These gods or demons therefore have the shape of a well-defined person and they take care of each of us personally. They are personal.The going a bit too far word is released! The god-or-demons of druidism (of Celtic paganism) are personal god-or-demons. Their destiny proceeds between an origin and an end to come, through a return within the cosmic cauldron at the end of the world.

Celtic mythology does only to sing, in a myriad of ways, the feats of these multiple facets of the god-or-demon we don’t name, born before all other pro-creatures, because they are the secondary causations of the world, the agents of the Law of the worlds (the Fate) who organized the primordial chaos or tohu wa bohu.

The answers in general the god-or-demons themselves give on their identity, their origin (their genealogy), at least according to Allan Kardec, are there ultimately to invite us to look at further, higher.

Taran/Toran/Tuireann, Lug, Brenus, the great Hesus master of Falias, become Cuchulainn later in Ireland, Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt, and the others, result from the unnamed god-or-demon who is the law of the worlds (cf. again the El Elyon of the Bible). They will come back to him when this world is accomplished (global erdathe or aredengto).

The god-or-demons consequently, have as grandfather, source or origin, as regards their body, the Cosmic Cauldron of life and permanent resurrection (Bitos) and it only. The god-or-demons in general have somewhat supernatural births (the bards find very long genealogies to them). What the poets who transmitted these old myths wanted to say through that, it is that god-or-demons, in this case, have a double origin, and we return there:

- They result at the same time from the energy substance even of the universal soul (awenyddia) and from the womb of the matter via the cosmic cauldron. A cauldron of plenty carefully kept by the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt (assimilated to Dispater by Caesar).

The story of the extraordinary births is there to remind us that the god-or-demons were not chosen nor adopted as children by the cosmic higher Being, but that they are really his children; through emanations.

This paradox of the personal god-or-demons, because it is one, is the key of druidism. The succession in generation of the ancestors of Lug, Brenus, the great Hesus of Falias, Abellio, Medrus, Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd and the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt, etc. in all these genealogies, expresses in a poetic way their implantation in Mankind and its history.

The name given to them is the sign even of this function (Hesus = who knows, Belisama = the very brilliant one, etc.)

The maponiaca, mabinogion or childhoods, of these gods or demons, are rich with lessons to meditate for us. They highlight their double origin well, coming under the higher being , but also resulting from the material womb of the earth.

Stories show them to us in general as true force of the human or external to the man, nature, the pagans have to gain.

Lug is besides a name in connection with the term meaning light and his favorite weapon (the bolga) has a name evoking that of the lightning (Latin fulgur).

The novels of these childhoods or mabinogion are an inexhaustible source of meditation for the true druidicists, we already noticed. They give precise examples to the well-known topic of the “god-or-demons with us “(contrebis).

Mythology is the modern name given to these scenes of daily life through which the god-or-demons open up to us, equipped with familiar details, but also with an inexhaustible profundity in the way of Jung.

These myths a long time constituted the framework of any legend worthy of the name. They constituted with the life and the feats of the great heroes, the main themes of the very first literatures.

The maponiaca or childhoods of the god-or-demons, are consequently charged up with an important theological content. They are not to be read as simple novels but to be meditated.

* Let us say more justly that the Gods are some attributes of the fate, some assistants of the Fate, acting as secondary causations augmenting this law of the worlds (as for example in the case of poetic justice).

DIVINE GENEALOGIES AND AMBIVALENCES.

There exists in fact three great opinions in connection with the divine genealogies, enough muddled it is true, of the Celtic god-or-demons, because often those have several names, what does not arrange the things. For example, Belin/Belen the avatar of Taran/Toran/Tuireann particularly honored in the Isle of Man, Manannan in Ireland. He was also called Orbsiu or Gaer in Gaelic language, and even Barinthus during the Middle Ages.

First opinion: former druids tried to translate into picturesque language a certain number of philosophical notions. For example, essence precedes existence may become, in colored language, essence is mother (or father) of existence.

The Gaelic name Neto/Neith/Neit, which means in the beginning, not fight, but something like “strength, vigor or energy “ a primordial ancestor of the god-or-demons and of the gigantic anguiped wyverns such Balaros (Balor), is in line with this meaning. Because it is there an undeniable allusion to a primordial principle, and this principle, people may say it well “father “of all the forms, in other words, father of Delbaeth since in old Celtic Deluato means “undifferentiated shape or vague contour “.

Deluato son of Neto, Gaelic Delbaeth son of Neit, that means ultimately “ (undifferentiated) shape daughter (or son) of Combativeness or of (cosmic) Energy “.

The purpose of such genealogies therefore is not to provide a complete civil status, but to indicate a sequence of principles or causes and effects. In any case, here what the great French specialist Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc'h thinks on this subject. “Neto is, in Ireland, an antiquated theonym ascribed to a deity who, in the myth, is located beyond the distinction between Andernas or Fomore and the clan of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia). Neto is the grandfather of Balor, himself grandfather of Lug “.

The divine genealogies do not have a chronological value accessible to our understanding, but they have a meaning of principle. Compared to Lug, Neto is a little what is Uranus for Zeus, in Greece.

And it does not appear apart from the lists or of the genealogical mentions, because the Irish myth of the origins crystallized around the name of Tuatha De Danann.

But his anteriority, which is that of the primordial chaos, explains at the same time why this god-or-demon, dark by definition since he is warlike, is also a “solar “Mars.

In the ancient Celtic tradition, in spite of the “family “relations which go back to initial chaos, the god-or-demons little by little dissociated from the underground entities or natural elements; the gigantic wyverns or anguipedics (andernas), who were rejected little by little into the non-world (the andumnon) of the physical and moral ugliness, especially in Ireland (the Fomorians: first heresy!)

Nevertheless there remained because of that an ambivalence for their actions. Ogmius is also a frightening god-or-demon, having the power , when he is angry , to involve in death, or to inflict sterility; according to the two curse tablets deciphered by the professor Egger of Vienna, in Austria.

These curious documents, engraved in cursive writing, come from Bregenz, on the lake of Constancy. Most explicit, discovered in 1930, claims the intervention of Ogmius, against a woman “so that she cannot marry “(because become sterile). Ogmius seems a frightening deity here, having the power to involve in death or to inflict sterility.

This practice of spell (sorcery), by writing on a lead tablets, the Celts did not invent it. They did nothing but borrow it.

“Defixio “is a Latin word designating , at the origin, the fact of sticking a nail, then the magic operation through which a substitute (for example a lead plate) is thus tortured while hoping to cause the same nuisances at the enemy of whom we think, strongly. This magic procedure, such as we perceive it in Greece and in Rome, includes the writing down, on the tablet , of the name of the targeted enemy. The written text can be besides developed by an invocation of supernatural powers, supposed implement this malefic charm, and by various specifications relating to the reasons for the sentence , or the various torments which will be used as punishment. It is a type of magic procedure which is witnessed through all the Mediterranean basin, in Antiquity. If in certain cases (in France à Chamalières for example) the druids thought to have to use Celtic language in this intention, it is perhaps because they addressed their magic message to Celtic supernatural entities, on Celtic sites.

Same thing for Lug who is from “heavenly “race through his paternal lineage and from “hellish “race on the mother’s side. And it is well that the specific characteristic of Lug: he is all at the same time. He

carries out in his person the union of the two worlds, that from the top and that from the bottom, the union of the spirit and of the matter, of life and death, of the thought but also of the action. With him all the oppositions disappear, he reconciles the opposites.

The fact that certain god-or-demons like Lug, are half wyvern or anguipedic (half fomorian Irishmen would say), means that they are therefore not “good “ Christian fashion (dagos means besides by no means “good “ in the moral sense, dagos means only “effective,“ effective with regard to one’s field); but that the god-or-demons can sometimes move in mysterious ways. Or incomprehensible, for their human brothers. And besides, the story which tells us the mabinogi of Branwen daughter of Llyr, in Wales, well symbolizes the ceaseless action of the Evil - the negative but necessary factor of the existence - to thwart Life. To which, nevertheless, it brings in the last resort its cooperation.

As forces of human nature or outside to the Man, god-or-demons are therefore not always “good “ in the moral and Christian sense of the word we have said. Unlike what maintain, rather oddly besides, and in a somewhat contradictory way, the monolatrous people of one Book (Matthew 6,31-33, and Luke 12,22-31); the solicitude of the Fate and of its god-or-demons, is not always concrete and immediate but often takes the form of a poetic justice. The Fate and its god-or-demons do not take care always of everything, the great things or the small ones. We saw it well at the time of the various metahistorical battles having shaken the earth in the Hyperborean times (the first battle of the Plain of the standing stones or mounds, and the battle for the Tailtiu/Talantio called Rosemartha on the Continent). It is therefore to the Man himself, once again, let us repeat it, to deal with what he will eat, or drink, wear as clothing or where he will be sheltered.

In short, the worship of the god-or-demons, based on a cosmogony which considers the world resulting from a divine fecundation, adores various personified forces: war, intelligence, fortune, etc.

Second opinion: the genealogies the man formerly ascribed to the god-or-demons, are the result of the very marked taste of the Celts for this literary genre, and are also the result of the later euhemerization of the divine concepts, changed into human kings or heroes. The mortal nature of the Irish god-or-demons, just like their place in various genealogies, is only the result of a long process of euhemerization (of the god-or-demons), having begun as of their concealment. At the beginning of druidism, it was not a question of layers of ages in the generation of the god-or-demons.

Third opinion: the divine genealogies are in fact the resultant of these two processes: colored explanation at the beginning, but little by little misunderstood, and degenerating thereafter into quite human misplaced vanity.

NOTE ABOUT THE “PUBLIC “ (known) LIFE

OF THE GOD-OR- DEMONS

AT HYPERBOREAN TIMES.

Oldest druidic mythology and belief in these islands in the north of the world are especially acts of faith, of course, and not history or biography in the modern senses of the term. Nothing less either, besides.

Mythology hands down to us these man lives of our god-or-demons, in which the unnamed god-or-demon (cf. for comparison the El Elyon and the elohim of the Bible) is made known. Lug, Brenus, Abellio, Belisama Brigindo, Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt, etc. are sons of God or of the Demiurge, god-or-demons themselves, and are only at one with the higher Fate. Within our people, their people, at hyperborean times, the god-or-demons our brothers, lived like men, subjected to every law of human condition. The god-or-demons sleep, they are hungry, and thirsty, they are tired, they are merry or sad, they are able of friendship or affection even of anger, in short they are fully men and assume completely, but freely, their condition. Our bards made them landing in a rather mythical time and a place it is true, coming from the islands of Hyperborea in the north of the world. They will speak the old Celtic language, the berla féné or iarn belre , will share the habits and the traditions of our ancestors, will share their anguishes and their hopes. Their death even in certain cases, which they faced as men accomplishing their individual personal destiny, is also a witness statement of their human condition. Nothing pretended nor artificial in the anguish previous to the last fight of the Hesus Cuchulainn , nothing unlikely of invented in the account of their torments. In short they are really also some men and likely consequently, like us, to be crushed by the suffering. Our gods or demons are therefore not unable to understand our, alas, too human, weaknesses in all things, they also faced, some ordeals. See on this subject the famous Irish legend of the nine days’ debility of the Ulaid.

But attention, when bards and veledae say that the god-or-demons lived like men, at hyperborean times, that does not mean therefore, naturally, that they were only me ( like the others). Their behavior, their relations, the standing of their personality expressed that they were men, but in quite a particular way.

Who are they, from which they come? They are ultimately the archetypal preternatural Man par excellence, they represent and recap in them the destiny of Mankind.

FIRST NOTE ABOUT THE OCCULTATION OF THE GOD-OR-DEMONS.

We will never meditate enough about this fact the battle of the Plain of the standing stones or tumulus or the battle for the Talantio/Tailtiu (Rosemartha on the Continent). God-or-demons defeated, overcome, and apparently humiliated by the men, in short crucified by their little brothers, and who nevertheless agree to make peace with them.

It is there a unique and revolutionary singularity of the druidic religion. No other religion in the world went so far in the incarnation of the god-or-demons. Never the god-or-demons were so men only during these battles of hyperborean times.

In the 11th century; as shows it below the poem extracted from the Book of Conquests (from the Lebor Gabala Erenn) and due to the hand of Flann Mainistrech (dead in 1056); this important theological notion began already in fact not to be no longer understood very by scholars. Who preferred to historicize it or to do upside down euhemerism with it (by imagining quite a human death for each one of these god-or-demons).

Date of this occultation according to Flann Mainistrech: at the time of the coming of Christianity in Ireland i.e., around the 5th or 6th century.

Hereafter therefore, this important excerpt which is grafted on the cycle of the Book of Conquests (called Lebor Gabala Erenn in Ireland) in connection with our old god-or-demons.

This text was published with translation in German by Rudolf Thurneysen under the title “Tuirill Bicrenn und Seine Kinder “.

* Except perhaps the detail of the hero’s light or luan laith which will come out from his forehead at the time when he gives up the ghost.

THE GREAT PAN IS DEAD (ON THE DEATH OF GODS).

Let us repeat it once again. It is obvious gods not more than angels or jinns could not die. If they die in our legends it is only following a literary convention emphasized by the Christianization which encouraged the populations to see in them only men, of course, being out of the ordinary, but only men nevertheless. Moreover we often see them reappearing at once in other legends. Gods by definition cannot die, except perhaps with this cycle. But they will reappear then under other names in the following cycle, because it is primarily forces of nature or of human soul.

We find nevertheless quite strange things under the pen of our Irish bards become Christian.

Some people say that they were demons, other that human bodies were around them [which is more correct]. They were in existence at the time of the coming of Faith. Their genealogies are reckoned back, so that of their fates Flann Mainistrech sang the following song, in testimony thereto.

Verse text of the section VII dealing with the Tuatha De Danann (poem LVI).

Flann Mainstreach cecinit

Hearken, you sages without sorrow,

If it be your will

That I relate the deaths with astuteness,

Of the cream of the children of the tribe of the goddess Danu (bia).

Edleo son of Alldai yonder ,

Was the first of the gods

Who fell in the virgin Ireland,

By the hand of Nerchon grandson of Semeon.

Ernmas, high her valor, fell,

As well as Fiachra, Echtach, Etargal,

Tuirill Picreo of Baile Breg

In the first battle of Mag Tuired.

Allod with battle fell

The father, great and rough, of Manannan

And perfect, fair Dona,

At the hands of the people of the goddess Domnu of the Fomoraig [the wyverns and the anguipeds].

Cethen and Cu died of horror

In Aircheltra;

And Cian ,far from his home, did Brian

Iucharba and Iuchar slay.

Of a stroke of the pure ? sun

Died Cairpre the great, son of Etan:

Etan died over the pool,

Of sorrow for white-headed Cairpre.

In Mag Tuired, it was through battle

Nuadu of the silver arm fell and Macha

That was after Samon’s feast [trinouxtion samoni = feast of the dead]

By the hand of Balar the strong-smiter.

Ogma fell, without being weak

At the hands of Indech son of the goddess Domnu [a wyvern or anguiped]:

Breasted Casmael fell

At the hands of Oichtriallach son of Indech.

Now of painful plague died

Dian Cecht and Goibniu the smith:

Luchtaine the craftsman fell along

With them by a strong fiery dart.

Creidne the pleasant artificer

Was drowned on the lake-sea, the sinister pool,

Fetching treasures of noble gold

From Spain.

Bress died in Carn ui Neit by the treachery of Lug,

With no fulness of falsehood:

For him it was a cause of quarrel indeed

Drinking bog stuff in the guise of milk.

Be Chuille and the beautiful Diana,

Both the priestesses died,

An evening with druidry,

By gray demons of air.

He fell on the strand eastward in the trenches of Rath Ailig,

Did Indui the great,

Son of pleasant Delbaeth,

At the hands of Gann, a youth bold, white-fisted.

Fea, lasting was his fame,

Died at the end of a month

After his slaying at the same stronghold

For sorrow for Indui the white-haired.

Boand died at the combat

At the wellspring of the son of noble Nechtan:

Aine daughter of the Dagda

Died for the love that she gave to Banba ???

Cairpre fell, remember you!

By the hand of Nechtan son of Nama:

Nechtan fell by the poison

At the hands of Sigmall, grandson of free Mider.

Abcan son of cold Bic-Felmais,

The bard of Lug with full victory,

He fell by the hand of Oengus without reproach

In front of Mider of mighty deeds.

Midir son of Indui yonder

Fell by the hand of Elcmar:

Fell Elcmar, fit for fight,

At the hands of Oengus the perfect.

Brian, Iucharba, and Iuchar there,

The three gods of the people of the goddess Danu (bia)

Were slain at Mana over the bright sea

By the hand of Lug son of Ethliu.

Cermat son of the divine Dagda

Lug wounded him

it was a sorrow of grief upon the plain

In the reign of Eochu Ollathair.

Cermat Honeymouh the mighty fell

At the hands of the harsh Lug son of Ethliu,

In jealousy about his wife,

Concerning whom the druid lied unto him.

By the hand of Mac Cecht

Without affection the harper fell:

Moreover Lug fell over the wave,

By the hand of Mac Cuill son of Cermat.

Aed son of the Dagda fell at the hands

Of Corrchend the fair, of equal valor;

Without deceit, it was a desire of revenge,

After he had gone to his wife iniquitously.

Corrcend from Cruach fell

The harsh very swift champion,

By the stone which he raised on the strand

Over the grave of the concupiscent ? Aed.

Cridinbel the crooked fell

The chief spell weaver of the people of the goddess Danu (bia)

Of the gold which he found in the idle Bann,

By the hand of the Dagda, grandson of Delbaeth.

As he came from cold Scotland

He, the son of the Dagda of ruddy form,

At the outlet of Boinn,

over here, there was Oengus drowned.

The only son of Manannan the sailor

The first love of the aged woman,

The tender youth fell in the plain

At the hands of Idle Bennan, on the plain of Breg.

Net son of Indui and his two wives,

Badb and Neman without deceit,

Were slain in Ailech without blame

By Nemtur the Red, of the Fomoraig [of the wyverns or anguipeds].

Fuamnach the white who was the wife of Mider,

Sigmall and Bri without faults,

In Bri Leith,

They were burnt alive by Manannan.

The son of Allod fell, with valor,

The rich treasure, Manannan,

In the battle in harsh Cuillenn

By the hand of Uillend of the red eyebrows.

Uillend with pride fell

At the hands of Mac Greine with pure victory:

The wife of the brown Dagda

Perished of plague on the slope in Liathdruim.

The Dagda died of a poisoned dart in the Brug

It is no falsehood,

Wherewith the woman Cethlenn gave him mortal hurt,

In the great battle of Mag Tuired.

Delbaeth and his son fell

At the hands of Caicher, the noble son of Nama:

Caicher fell with the idle Boinn,

At the hands of Fiachna son of Delbaeth.

Fiacha and noble Ai fell

Before Eogan of the Estuary:

Eogan of the cold estuary fell

Before Eochaid the knowing, hard as iron.

Eochaid of knowledge fell thereafter

At the hands of Aed and of Labraid:

Labraid, Oengus, Aed, fell

At the hands of Cermat of form all fair.

Eriu and Fotla with pride,

Mac Greine and Banba with victory,

Mac Cuill, Mac Cecht with purity

Fell in the battle of Temair.

Mac Cecht fell at the hands of noble Eremon:

Mac Cuill, of perfect Eber:

Eriu yonder, at the hands of Suirge

Thereafter Mac Greine of Amorgen.

Fotla at the hands of Etan with pride,

Of Caicher, Banba with panache,

Whatever the place wherein they sleep,

Those are the deaths of the warriors; hear you !

The people of the children of the goddess Danu (bia) , a company like to crystal,

Though men of false learning say

That the people of ships and of drinking beakers

Are in Promised Land (Tir Tairngire)

The only Promised Land here spoken of which

The Children of the goddess Danu (bia) have,

It is the ever-narrow steading wherein is judgment ;

It is the lowest Hell.

Though they say in various ways,

False men of history,

That the people of this cursed race were sid * folk ,

The belief is displeasing to Christianity.

Whosoever believes in his heart

That they are thus in sid * mounds,

He shall not inhabit Heaven of the angels,

For the cause that it is no truth to which he hearkens.

* Late Christian name. It is the Sedodumnon.

Editor’s note. For the rhyme, there are many poetic chevilles in all that, even some contradiction with other texts (they are there the inevitable consequences of centuries and centuries of oral handing down).

Flann Mainistreach being Christian, he protests obviously in his final conclusion against this old druidic belief (some supernatural beings, only covered with bodies of human appearance, which did not really die, but still live the Other Celtic World, and so on).

He claims that it is anti-Christian (what is perfectly exact obviously), but also coarsely erroneous or untrue (what is much less true. Why would be this less historical than the resurrection and the ascension into the Heaven within angels or saints of all kinds, of the great rabbi Jesus the Nazorean?)

Truth is that the medieval heirs to the druids, already slaves of the requirements of a myth transcribed in pseudo-history, were no longer able to express, even less to understand, the notion of Next World.

Also let us note that the moral becoming clearer between positive forces (tribe of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu) and negative forces (tribe of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy too, Domnu) were not as Manichean on the Continent.

We find ancestors communal to the deities of the two camps, marriages,dubious alliances against human beings become a little too enterprising : Fir Domnain, Fir Gallioin, Fir Belg Gauls (Viroi Dumnionoi, Viroi Galloi, Viroi Volcai).

Jointly with the mythological euhemerization, gradually in Ireland a kind of almost Manichean antinomy settled, which existed by no means in the beginning. Certain “Fomorian people “ appear in continental theonymy in a less negative light, Cicolluis for example. The Gaelic term which is generally associated with him is gricenchos < cribos cen coxsas: savage without feet (Cichol).

The bards of the druidism (veledae) had recourse themselves also to the image, a little naive, of a division of the world or cosmos between the men, the (Fir) Domnain (Gallioin or Belg etc.) and the god-or-demons. The first ones on the surface of the ground, and the second ones in another World, underground, celestial, or insular, very far in the west, according to the peoples ( the Sedodumnon). But this Next World which is the Sedodumnon, being endowed with ubiquity, the occasional contacts of the human and of the divine are always done in the direction of the bursting of the divine one into the human world. Because our world is literally immersed in the divine world (without seeing it!) Time being stopped from passing in such a case, it is the man who felt the contrary impression enter the world of the god-or-demons, and it is the reason of eternal youth. Identically, the coming back in this world, cause of sudden old age, of disease and of death through multiplied acceleration of human time for those who have imprudence to return there; is less in fact a return than a faint or a withdrawal from the Next World.

SECOND NOTE ABOUT THE OCCULTATION OF THE GOD-OR-DEMONS AND THEIR RETURN.

The first concealment of the god-or-demons, known as minor occultation (in other words the beginning of their progressive disappearance) thus took place with the 3rd battle of the plain of the standing stones or mounds; the battle for the Talantio symbolized by the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if this term is preferred, Rosemartha, on the Continent. i.e., four thousand six hundred years ago at least. According to certain scholars. They are events to which the lines of Flann Mainistreach make reference awkwardly. But this date of - 2500 before Jules Caesar, belongs more to the metahistory or to the hiero-history, than to objective reality. It is therefore above all symbolic.

The vegtos vidtovosou Gaelic feth fiada is the invisibility gift of the god-or-demons of the Next World; in the sense that it does not prevent them from being seen between them, nor to see people of this world, but that the human beings do not see them unwillingly. It is the case particularly of Lug who, coming to heal Cuchulainn of his wounds, is made visible only for him.

This feth fiada is an invention or a creation of an avatar of Belin/Belen/Barinthus, called Manannan mac Lir by the Irishmen.

“Dergos Boduos therefore settled in Sidh Buibh above Loch Dergert, Medros the proud one in the sedos of Truim, Tadicos the great, son of Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd, in the sedos of Droma Dean… And to each one of the Toutioi Devas whom consequently a fief and a throne were needed, Belinos Barinthus (Manannan) assigned a fief and a seigniory. Then he made the vegtos vidtouos (feth fiada), the feast of Gobannos, and swine, for the warriors.

Thanks to the vegtos vidtouos (feth fiada), the god-or-demons became invisible, and thanks to the feast of Gobannos they escaped the age and the decline. As for the swine, each time one killed one of them, one found it again well alive the following day “.

The meaning of the expression remains obscure, not that we are unaware of senses of these words, but feth presents five or six possibilities of meaning , and fiad (a) three or four.

Most probable is “mist or veil of science “(vegtos vidtovos).

This feth fiada or magic gift of invisibility remained, of course, a privilege of the god-or-demons, a monopoly and a secret. Only some mortals too could benefit from it, over time.

For example, the Setanta Vesus Cuchulainn, we take for a reincarnation of the great Hesus already mentioned under the name of Morvesus or Morfessa, in the Book of Conquests (it was him the master of the underground world of Fo-alias, in other words, Thule).

"Your friends of the Sidh-folk [ of the Sedodumnon. Editor’s note] have succored you, and you did not disclose them to me before," said Fer Diad.

"Not easy for me were that," answered the hesus Cuchulain; "for if the feth fiada be once revealed to one of the human beings, none of the people of the goddess Danu (bia) will have power to practice concealment or magic.

According to the mishap occurred to Etain in the Gaelic apocryphal account of the “Nurture of the Houses of the Two Milk-Vessels “(she loses her gift of invisibility while bathing); this situation would have ceased with the coming of Christianity in Ireland i.e., around the 5th century.

This second occultation of the gods or demons of our brothers (since they also result from the Nemet Hornunnos) involved their almost final disappearance, but it occurred on a date in reality more difficult to define. Certain texts suggest the 5th century with Christianity, but others speak about the Year 1,000 as for fairies.

SYZYGIES OR ASSOCIATIONS OF GOD-OR-DEMONS.

A) THE COSMIC HIEROGAMY.

The bipolarity or relative dualism spirit/matter, fire or water, male or female, masculine or feminine, symbolized by the torc (necklace with two buffers).

On some reliefs of average size (thirty to fifty centimeters high), the god-or-demon seems to communicate with his partner by holding, either the same symbol of plenty than her, or another of the same meaning. The group of Alesia, preserved in the Palace of Roure, in the city of Avignon, is significant in this respect. The husbands are turned one towards the other, instead of being both face-on, and the god-or-demon poses his right hand on the top of the horn of plenty carried by his partner.

Some gestures of loving complicity, we find some of them elsewhere, in Solutre or Nevers; where the god-or-demon presents the same objects as his partner: the horn of plenty - he often carries by the top, was it a more virile movement in the eyes of the sculptors? - And the sacrificial bowl. The husbands, without doubt, share the same functions and take care, with their gentle mutual affection, of the prosperity of the human beings.

Bipolarity, we know it, is one of the first characteristics of Nature. Life is the spark which ignites from it permanently.

One of the great principles of druidic theology is therefore that Nature is like sexed. And like the angels of the Bible able to make children to the daughters of men (Genesis 6,2: the angels saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose… they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown); the god-or-demons themselves have consequently a gender. That of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt remained besides famous, just like that of the Irish Sheela na Gig.

Hence the notion of divine couples. A characteristic of druidic religion of the druids is indeed the worshipping deities living a couple. It is there a singularly developed form of anthropomorphism, considered from the standpoint of fertility or prosperity. The dyads or groups of two deities abound.

On the continent in particular, there are purely indigenous couples: Suqellus and Nantosuelta, Bormo or Albius and Damona, Bormanus and Bormana, Ucuetis and Bergusia, Cicolluis and Litavis, Telo and Stanna. Many local worships are therefore put under the protection of a god-or-demon and of a goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred. Damona and Bormo in Bourbon-Lancy, Brixia and Luxovius in Luxeuil, Sirona and Grannos in Grand, and so on.

B) THE HIEROGAMY OF FIRE IN WATER.

“ The Heaven is my Father, my begetter: kinship is here. This great earth is my kin and Mother. Between the wide-spread world-halves is the birthplace: the Father laid both the Wife and Daughter's germ within it“.

Thus the Vedic poet sang four or five thousand years ago, before an earth altar where a fire of dry herbs flamed (Rig Veda. Book 1. Hymn CLXIV.Visvedevas).

A profound divination, a sublime consciousness is expressed in these strange words. They contain the secret of the double origin of man. Heavenly is the origin of his soul. But his body is the product of earthly elements fecundated by a cosmic essence “ (Eduard Schure. The great initiates).

The place between two worlds to which the Vedic poet refers, undoubtedly designates the Cosmic mother Great goddess-or-demoness Danu (in Ireland) . Taran/Toran/Tuireann (Varuna among Hindus) represents the invisible, hyperphysical, eternal and intellectual, order, he embraces the infinity of space and time.

The oldest figurations of the couple, without it is known if the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, was then called Maia or Rosemartha on the Continent, are those of Paris, on the pillar of the Boatmen (Esperandieu. IV 3135), and Trier in Germany, the stele of the Mediomatrix Indus (Esperandieu. VI 4929).

The latter presents on its principal face the dedication to the only Mercury, topped with images in low-relief of the god-or-demon and goddess-or-demoness, or of the fairy. On one on the adjacent sides, Esus makes the oak with the three cranes and the three bull heads fall .

On the third is represented a female deity, probably (Mor) Rigani. [Rigani is a dative. Editor’s note].

Texts as well as archeology and folklore let an intimate, constant, connection, showing through between the solar worship and the water worship. The religious assessment of a lot of Romano-British or Gallo-Roman spas brings together luminous deities and dispensing water deities. In Lhuis, in France, a precious inscription, discovered a few decades ago, has just revealed the existence of a temple dedicated to the healing Mothers who personified a nearby brook. However, it is that, from the same site, had been formerly exhumed, an altar of the wheeled god-or-demon, i.e., of the solar god-or-demon.

We will never repeat enough the double testimony, one written, the other illustrated, the head of Gorgon which decorates the pediment of the temple of Aquae Sulis in Bath brings to us: it evokes the sun clearly. Identical case with the god-or-demon of Essarois (France) in connection with the relation between the sun and the spring. The same pediment which presents the image of the god-or-demon, the head surrounded by beams, also bears the dedication to Vindonnus (Apollo) and the fountains. It would be difficult to have a more eloquent confirmation.

If we remember that the former name of Aachen was Aquae Granni, i.e. “water of Grannus “ we will conclude from it that Grannus, a solar god-or-demon, was also and surely a deity of water.

A legendary account that the great archeologist Jean-Jacques Hatt had the virtue of having discovered in the Acts of the martyrdom of Saint Vincent of Agen , is worth being reported.

Oldest text.

In Aginnensis quondam urbis territorio, regione Metensium *, quæ una est de nobilioribus civitatibus Galliæ, sacrilega Paganorum turba solito more convenerat, [Præstigias dæmonis ** in rota ignea, deorsum & sursum voluta,] ceremonias non veræ religionis, sed falsæ seductionis exercere in templo, diis suis consecrato. Quo videlicet inhabitantes dæmones, fallacia sua, convenientis ibidem vulgi mentes oculorumque acies fallebant; ut putaret se plebs illa miserabilis aliquid operis divini in simultatibus ludentis diaboli intueri. Nam per ejusdem templi fores, quasi ad nutum alicujus inibi constituti numinis, aut ut verum dixerim, inhabitantis dæmonis, rota flammis circumsepta, solita erat prorumpere; & a summo collis vertice in præterfluentis amnis gurgitem, in præceps deorsum propere devoluta, percurrere; rursusque a flumine ad ædem templi devio rotatu, vana vomens incendia, remeare. Hæc autem omnia fallacissimus ille & invidus bonorum omnium diabolus ideo faciebat, ut persuaderet miseris hujusmodi phantasmate, quatenus crederent eum esse quod non erat. Ad memoratum itaque delubrum, uti jam enarrare cœpimus, [S. Vincentius signo Crucis evertit:] Præses antedictæ urbis cum multa plebium turba convenerat, & ad progredientis rotæ igneum gyrum ingentis populi solicitudo pendebat. Inter quas populorum catervas S. Vincentius, decus Martyrum mox futurus, ut credendum est, miseratione Dei, ne populi diutius illuderentur, exhibitus, & nulli antea incolarum cognitus, celeri, quantum rei exitus docet, martyrio coronandus advenit; & quænam hæc populi esset celebritas, solicitus Dei cultor agnovit. Nec eum doli latere diaboli potuere; qui erat verus Dei famulus & fidelis cultor Domini nostri Jesu Christi. Prorumpenti ergo de templo huic fraudulento diabolicæ machinationis operi, Athleta Christi elevata sursum dextera signum Crucis opposuit; atque illico omnis diabolici phantasmatis illusio, facto signaculo veræ Dietatis evanuit, & numquam inibi fallacia nequissimi deceptoris mentes hominum in posterum seducere tentavit.

“On the territory in the past attached to the town of Agen, in the area of the Metenses, which is one of the best-known cities, the sacrilege crowd of pagans usually gathered, in order to celebrate ceremonies. Not of the true religion, but of an illusory seduction, in a sanctuary devoted to its god-or-demons.

The demons which haunted this place deceived by their misleading operations, the eyes and the mind of the crowd which was gathered there. So that these unhappy people believed to attend some divine miracle, where there were only diabolical artifices.

Indeed, crossing the door of this same temple, as if it had been pushed by some divine will, or rather to tell the truth by that of a demon dwelling in this place; a wheel surrounded by flames was accustomed to leave, and descend from there since the top of the hill to the pit of a brook which ran further down. It went up then the slope, to the temple of the sanctuary, by an opposite movement, while spewing vain flames. This illusion disappears in front of a sign of the cross. The crowd of furious pagans kills the saint”.

Variant .

Beatissimus Vincentius, Levita Agennensis; ut a Patribus traditur reique declarat eventus; quadam die, dum pro more suo intentus esset in cælum, confestim Angelicam promeruit admonitionem, quatenus ad martyrii palmam festinaret intrepidus. [Angelico monitu] Itaque non immemor factus tantæ admonitionis, munitus undique vexillo sanctæ Crucis, velut alter. Elias quo vocat eum Spiritus, adire deliberat quantocius. Tandem solicitus adeo suæ vocationis, ut erat totus in Deo positus, non longo post temporis intervallo, quoddam Agennensium oppidum invisit festinus, quod a Velanum agris Reonemensis * ruris dicebat antiquitas. [Christum prædicans] Cumque ibi in Sancto prædicationis munere consisteret. idolorumque cultores avariis superstitionibus retraheret; tentus ab apparitoribus, quasi auctor sceleris, catenarum vinculis atrociter implicatur: atque ad Præsidis audientiam innocens suppliciis mancipandus adductus, [Præsidi sistitur:] tribunali ejus satellitibus undique septus statuitur. Quem videns Præses, confestim eum verbis compellat amaris. Tune es, inquiens, ille scelestissimus, qui nostrorum deorum culturam abominaris etc...etc..

What Auguste-Francis Lievre summarizes thus.

“Formerly in the county of Agen, according to an antique ritual, the pagans, to celebrate a ceremony of their worship, swarmed in a nemeton located in a high place, called Velanum. And at one point the doors of the sanctuary were opened then a wheel surrounded by flames appeared, which, precipitated on the slope, rolled into the river at the foot of the slope. Brought back to the temple in secret *** and launched again, flames started again to emanate from it.”

* Undoubtedly a distortion of Nemetensium.

** Therefore, for the Christian author, of this account, and in accordance with a long tradition since Tertullian and St. Augustine, the gods concerned really existed. The only thing is that for him they were demons and not gods. Editor’s note.

*** Editor’s note. Or then it was another wheel. In any case in the eyes of the ancient druids, it was only a ceremony of worship. All the stupid intolerance of St. Vincent was necessary to see there a diabolical magic or an intervention of the demons and to want to put an end to it. Like the Christian Taliban of the East called parabolani and Saint Symphorian a few decades earlier. Ah religion of love forever, when you hold us! What just goes to show that Faith is seldom balanced with Reason. Judeo-Christianity, what an intellectual decline! Islam what an intellectual decline!

On and off, similar uses are witnessed. The observed rituals therefore emphasize a connection between fire and water, of which we will have to seek the explanation.

On the inscription of Clarensac, Jupiter-Taranis is combined with the Mother Goddess-or-demoness. The famous French archeologist sees there an allusion to the cosmic fight of Taran/Toran/Tuirann and the fertilization of the ground by the lightning. The Celts then the Romano-British or Gallo-Romans, indeed had the concern of carrying out this connection: the contact so much desired between the principle of celestial fruitfulness, resulting from Taran/Toran/Tuireann, and the underground principle of fruitfulness resulting from Earth.

They held this dominant idea from a popular cosmological view of the Universe divided between two hemispheres: the world from on high being the field of the air god-or-demons; the world from below that of the underground deities.

Short notes of reading suggested by the excellent book by Claude Sterckx: “Elements of Celtic cosmogony “ published by the University editions in Brussels.

Macrocosm and microcosm result from the union of the male spiritual principle of igneous nature (King Taran/Toran/Tuireann) and of the female material principle of watery nature, the cosmic mother great goddess-or-demoness).

Such is the fundamental teaching of the former druids: fire and water. One their prophecies, brought back by Strabo, affirms besides that a day, only fire and water will prevail, in other words, the matter and the spirit.

In other words: at the druids, the higher deity, the Par-God who is a gigantic cosmic cauldron including us all, is compared to a universal energy source. This boiling of cosmic energy (Bitos) is produced especially by the interaction of two principles which are in a way its children.

- One female is single (although multiform), mobile but not driving, acting but not active. It is the cosmic great goddess-or-demoness, the primordial matter-water. Its name Morrigani means besides “Sea Queen “.

- The other, male, is multiple, driving but motionless, active but not acting except by exception. It is Taran/Toran/Tuireann the spirit-fire.

We find there one of the basic topics of the Indo-European theology, that of fire in water. The Rig Veda for example, worthiest of the Aryan texts, indeed quotes as one of the “Fire “ god-or-demons: Apam Napat “progeny of the waters “. The Indian exegetes explain this apparent paradox with the example of the flash outgoing from the clouds of the storm, thus exoterizing, to make it better understood by masses, the fundamental and universal concept of the “coïncidentia oppositorum “(of the coincidence of opposites).

Among the druids, this opposition was moderate, because there was, according to them, a relative and non-absolute opposition, between the Spirit and the Matter. The case of Sul Minerva in Bath, in England, is the perfect illustration of this druidic design of the fire in water.

I. THE SPIRIT.

We may approximately, very roughly, to thus summarize the druidic doctrines on this point, thanks to the precious myth recorded in one of the panegyrics of Constantine.

“ Rightly, therefore, have you honored those most venerable shrines with such great treasures that they do not miss their old ones, any longer. Now may all the temples be seen to beckon you to them, and particularly our Apollo [the temple of Aquae Nisinciis, today Saint-Honore close to Autun in Burgundy], whose boiling waters punish perjuries-which ought to be especially hateful to you.

Immortal gods, when will you grant that day on which this most manifestly present god, with peace reigning everywhere, may visit those groves of Apollo as well, both sacred shrines and steaming mouths of springs? Their bubbling waters cloudy with gentle warmth seem to wish to smile, Constantine, at your gaze, and to insert themselves within your Iips.

You will, of course, marvel at that seat of your divinity too, and its waters warmed without any trace of soil on fire, which has no bitterness of taste or exhalation, but a purity of draft and smell such as you find in icy springs. And there you will grant favors, and establish privileges, and at last restore my homeland because of your veneration of that very spot “ (Panegyric of Constantine XXI-XXII).

A text which we can balance with that of the legend of the damona vinda named Boann in Ireland. The queen, in order to purify of adultery, wants to bathe in a river called Segisa (Seaghais). She tries to reach the well through a sinistratio (movement to the left), but the river burns her, overflows, and sets off in pursuit of her to the sea where she is drowned.

We can deduce from this very instructive myth the following elements.

1. There is in water a mysterious power of igneous nature.

2. To be able to use it, it is initially necessary above all to know how to make it favorable to oneself.

3. If not, the water swells dramatically (in the Irish variant).

4. And launch to the sea a furious river.

The Celts, like the majority of the Indo-European peoples, designed life, the true life, as a fire or a vital spark, detectable through the heat, which distinguishes the living beings from the cold corpses. As the Belgian great historian that is Claude Sterckx wrote rightly, a rest of this belief is found in the rejection, by the Celts, of the Christian idea that hell is a fire gehenna. A long time after their conversion to Christianity, the hell of the Celts indeed, will remain frozen.

The higher life was thus compared by the former druids, at the level of the macrocosm, with vital warmth (that man can also give through his sperm, where resides part of this warmth. The woman receives the germ of life which is the male sperm and she feeds it until the placental incarnation).

In the druidic symbolic, the Great Spirit is consequently represented in an allegorical way by a powerful god-or-demon, of igneous nature, able to fertilize the matter. On the continent, it was Taranis, the indigenous Jupiter, under his various nicknames.

Rudiobus or Rudianus is sometimes represented as a divine horse. He evokes Taranis in his horse-shaped aspect. The great horse-shaped or riding god-or-demon, of the former druids, is found besides also, under the name of Atepomarus the great rider, in the famous myth of the foundation of Lyon, the Holy City of the Western druidism: Lugdunon.

Taranis has lightnings able to kill the living and to bring back the dead to the life, thundering but also phallic symbols, of course, symbols of the power of the spirit.

II MATTER.

In druidic mythology, the female principle is also compared to matter through a well-known semantic equivalence (Matra mother, materia matter) in the Indo-European phonetic Kabalah. Matir-mother, mater-material (wood among other things) among Celts.

And this mother goddess-or-demoness of the druidic mythology is called “Rigani “(sic).

The cosmic mother great goddess-or-demoness called Rigani, has the capacity to regulate the passages of Virtuality to Existence (though fecundation) or conversely, the return to the non-being, when the divine spark gives up the body. This Rigani is the universal and cosmic matrix (on the level of the macrocosm) which takes on the passing and the periodic returns of the sparks of life, which give a soul to the world; the passing from essence to existence or conversely, from existence to essence, according to the major cycle of the births and deaths, when the spirit is disembodied. To take over a word of Claude Sterckx, we could say that the Rigani is in a way a cosmic generator carrying ut the realization of all the existences, and their cyclic return towards virtuality. Through the endless chain of incarnations and deaths. Such is the meaning of the famous wheel of Taranis also known as “labarum “: matter fertilized by spirit. To note: Christianity recovered it under the name of St Andrew’s or St Patrick’s cross.

In druidic mythology, a very particular bond links, as we saw it, the topic of the sea and of the water, with that of the origins. The idea of primordial water and ocean appears for example in the Gaelic theogony of Ireland, with the name of the famous cauldron of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt, the Morius, related to that of the sea (Mori > Muir in Gaelic language). Such is therefore ultimately the meaning of the famous inexhaustible cauldron of the grail: a cosmic hierogamy (matter fertilized by spirit, by fire, and, therefore, the infinite potentiality of life).

The current life, the life of this world, is generated by the waters of the world, female, as the waters of the woman in which the new human lives are embodied. It is not a chance if so many texts, since the antique defixio found in Bath, represent death as a return at the watery state. It is not a chance either if the goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if it is preferred, of all the Celtic lands, are systematically identified with rivers (the Clyde River in Scotland for example, the Marne River in France).

NOTES ON THE MYSTICISM OF SPRINGS.

In other words, the “major topic that is the birth of the spring, carrying out the passage from the underground world to the air world, and consequently endowed with a salutary power and a healing virtue “.

These myths belong to a druidic syncretism which is not former to the last two centuries of independence.

The hot springs of Bath are known since at least the 9th century before our era. There exists even a legend about them. They would have been discovered by a Celtic prince named Bladud. Bladud, having caught leprosy, is banished from the court of the king his father. He hides in the countryside, where he is employed in a farm. One day that he walks his pigs, they too affected by the disease concerned, he discovers hot springs, close to the Avon River. Miracle… the pigs which plunged themselves there, show no longer a sign of leprosy. He bathes in his turn and goes out cured. Become king, he will found the town of Bath around these miraculous springs and will have a son, King Lir immortalized by Shakespeare. According to this legend, resulting from the History of the kings of England (Historia regum Britanniae) dating back 12th century, it is therefore the father of the king Lear of Shakespeare who would have discovered the springs. Luck would have it really well, since Lear is a name referring to the notion of primordial liquid element.

N.B. The History of the Kings of [Great] Britain reports the life of the first sovereign of the isle since Brutus, Great-grandson from Aeneas, to Cadvalladr or Caedwalla, king of the North of Wales (7th century). The author claims to act in a historian, but his book is mainly a work of fiction, mingling a multitude of fables with national traditions like this of the great Breton king Arthur. He will be held in

high esteem by the later writers, including Shakespeare (for his king Lear). In other words, many legends and very little history, in the scientific sense of the word! At any rate, let us move on! The pilgrims flock and win over the good graces of the goddess-or-demoness, or of the good fairy, through the local druids, by offering to them coins to be thrown in the spring.

This worship was, however, not introduced by Celtic populations. We have the pieces of evidence that certain sources were attended, for religious reasons, by the men of the Neolithic age. The majority of our thermal spas with recognized medical value, like Bath, were the subject of a first adjustment well before the Roman epoch.

The practice of the bratou decantem or ex voto, often goes back until the Neolithic era. Oak wooden catchments , casing and channeling made with the same material, are sometimes former to the arrival of Celtic people. The wells out of wooden of the salted fountains close to Vezelay, in France, would date back to a thousand years before our era. Another striking example of the length of time as well as the continuity of worship linked to a fountain, is that of the spring, forgotten well today, of Grisy, in Saint-Symphorien-de-Marmagne. Soundings, carried out in the beginning of the 20th century, revealed a series of lucky finds, which range in an almost continuous way, since Neolithic times until the end of the Roman epoch.

We are astonished to note the presence of ex voto (of bratou decantem) near springs which appear without particular qualities. To suggest the patients who visited these springs were victims of a collective hallucination, when they gave thanks to the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of water, concerned ; is a simplistic manner to deal with this problem. Were the chemical analyses rather thorough? Is a chemical analysis enough to distinguish if such spring water is curative or not?

The curative qualities ascribed to water are at the origin of a generalized tendency to visit the springs and to beg the deities who are their patrons. Any improvement of health, any cure, in this case is regarded as the gracious gift of a god-or-demon, for example of a goddess-or-demoness or a good fairy (or of a divine couple), who intervenes through water, a sacred element. It was in fact enough to plunge the linen of the small patients in water to get their cure.

Spring water is pure of nature. It preserves its qualities as well as its effectiveness at the highest level, on the condition of being preserved against any input of stain. The Romano-British or Gallo-Roman habit [to shelter the basin of a spring by a stone cupola] prolongs the Celtic tradition; since the existence of a roof, in a very early time, was suspected or noted several times, above various sacred basins.

This fashion persisted during the Middle Ages, when archeology and toponymy so often agree to detect fountains which are never banal springs.

Resurgence waters, i.e., the springs, acquired the aptitude to confer or spread the life. To the qualities they drew from their solar origin, they join an enrichment come from their stay within the ground: they became fertilizing. Water has the obviously essential aspects of life: it is endowed with motion, when it spouts out in a fountain, then runs out in a peaceful brook or impetuous torrent; it is at the same time word, because it murmurs, or sings joyfully [ whence the notion of Visucia, of prophetic Minerva combined with the god-or-demon of the spring sanctuaries, like in Bath. Editor’s note] or breaks out in noisy swirls, in quivering cascades. Much more, it is creating life, in the sense that it generates fertility then carries it onto its passing throughout its banks. Moreover, as a pure element, it erases any stain and cures the diseases. These marvelous properties are due to the doubly divine origin of water. Men of formerly therefore put water under the patronage of a celestial deity and or Mother-Earth. The springs, of which the bursting and the mysterious outpouring, are the benefit granted by two divine powers. Early, these two forces were conceived as a couple. The male partner, driving element, is the Sun, considered as the higher regulator of all the manifestations of which the sky is the theater; the female partner is not another thing than the Earth, whose generating force was fully understood as soon as agriculture started to develop. The rain in all its forms, regular and prolonged, rain , violent shower, flashing storm, is the way through which is achieved the sacred coming together of the Sky and of the Earth. The soil, then fertilized, is covered with a vegetable coat and bears its fruits. Generally, both deities are called upon simultaneously. It also happens that people speak separately either to the god-or-demon, or, more often perhaps, to the mother goddess-or-demoness , who personifies fertile Earth.

This notion of divine couple is besides in fact to be taken in the broad sense of the word (a love square?) In many cases, there are indeed a male god-or-demon (the one of the spring), but combined

with several goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if it is preferred (three: the mothers of the river rising from this spring).

Some examples on the continent.

Glanis and the Glanic Mothers. Glani et Glanicabus on a Latin inscription (Glanum/Glanon close to Saint-Remy de Provence).

Nemausus and the Mothers inhabitants of Nîmes, etc., etc.

The pillar of Mavilly. The higher register expresses the sidereal origin of the spring, spouting out under the effect of the mallet cast from the top of the sky. On the lower register, Venus-Rigani (sic), transferred from the sky under the ground to become goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, watery, presides over the birth of the spring. Esus himself takes part in this divine miracle, by casting his ram-headed snake, charged with striking the ground with its head to clear the passage to the life-saving water.

It is therefore on this second table the myth of the spring, a combination of legends adjusted well to the watery shrine. In this clever adaptation of the myths and of the traditional theology, there were, of course, druids, faithful to their ideas, but largely opened to the Graeco-Latin culture (they replaced the sacred tree or post by a stone column).

C) In addition to the collaboration of god-or-demons based on the principle of the interaction of fire and water (solar god-or-demons and springs god-or-demons); there also exist combinations of god-or-demons which are based on similarities of function (tribe teutates and healing god-or-demons, or goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if you prefer, of the springs, for example)…

THE PRIMORDIAL TRINITARIANISM.

The distinction between triad of god-or-demons or tripling of intensity is not always easy to make.

The druids liked to consider deities combined by three. The philosophical and well thought monotheism of the druids could appear as a trinity, in other words, as a unit in three persons if we understand well.

The authors are unanimous to note the tendency of the Romano-British or Gallo-Roman iconography to group the images by three, or to triple repetition of certain symbols. Specialists think at once of the triads of Mothers.

This tripleness is not destroyed by the variety of the attitudes; what proves it well, it is that certain specimens, like one of the triads of Vertault , show the three Mothers in an absolutely identical pos (upright and holding a horn of plenty).

It is therefore three times the same mother-goddess-or-demoness who is thus represented.

The believer thinks that by offering a triple image, he increases his chances to be granted or the quality of his gratitude.

A similar feeling is at the origin of the three-headed or three faced god-or-demons, of the triple belisama Brigindo Brigantia Brigitte, of the triple Morrigan, triple Epona triple, triple “Nehalennia “and of so many other “trinitarian“ figures.

The three-headed god-or-demon sees everything, the triple horn expresses the power peaked to the most. Three… absolute superlative.

The repetition multiplies the power of the one or of what the object of it, is, but only the triple repetition raises this power to its highest level.

It is witnessed that existed among all Celts, as well of Continent as of [Great] Britain and Ireland, the worship of the Great Mother who was inseparable from that of one or several trinities of “matrons“. Banuta, Eriu and Votala, in Ireland, for example.

If we speak, on the one hand, of the Mother-Goddess-or-Demoness and, on the other hand, of the various trinitarian groups of matrons, it should not be believed they are necessarily distinct deities. We are in the presence of one goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, sometimes considered in her unicity, sometimes in three persons, without there is here something contradictory. Any Christian will easily understand it, since he also sometimes speaks of God, sometimes of the Holy Trinity.

There exists a three horned wild boar and Termagant or Tervagant (the tarvus trigaranus) is the monster with three horns or three cranes. Thus multiplied, the god-or-demon is able to look in all the directions, to supervise the universe. This process, intended to increase the power, is that the Indians, to the other end of the Indo-European world, apply to their deities (Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva); there existed among Greeks (Geryon, Cerberus, Hecate). Thracians (three headed died heroes) and Slavs will know it (Triglav).

DIVINE SYNCRETISMS.

About aniconism (absence of images or statues) of the oldest artistic tradition of La Tene.

Another great principle of druidic theology, or catechesis, or pedagogy.

In the primary druidic design, the god-or-demons, as metaphysical “principles “ (eons) belong to the field of the infinite, and are therefore not reducible to finiteness. To bring back them to human state amounts to atrophy them.

But the druids also always personalized their divine concepts, including these which were not topical or geographical, but which concerned rather the field of the social allegory with a human, strictly human, use (Wisdom, Justice, and so on).

A divine function or personality splits up, is broken up into a trinity or an infinity of characters who, for the purpose in hand, become brothers and sisters. And according to such or such account, the same adventure is ascribed to one or other. The Celtic Tradition, by definition, approaches * the philosophical or well thought out monotheism. The god-or-demons of the Panth-eon or Pleroma are the assistants of the Fate, some secondary causations, the various aspects of the higher great deity, outside classification and function, because it transcends all the classes and takes on all the functions.

As regards divine view, there is therefore in druidism balance between the centrifugal tendency (polytheism ad infinitum) and the centripetal tendency (dogmatic monotheism).

In order to avoid useless duplicates, the ancient druids undertook, and this, as of the earliest time, to gather under the same designation some divine functions, of which the multiplication was not really necessary to the comprehension of the world, even for the people.

The indigenous god-or-demons were already much more numerous than Caesar said it , but many of them were parallels.

Each tribe, each village perhaps, had a business god-or-demon **, people undoubtedly avoided naming differently than with a flattering epithet. That proves, not that we deal with several god-or-demons of different nature, but rather than local particularism continued to be expressed in the religious field. A careful study of the indigenous divine names would undoubtedly reduce rather strongly the number of these which reveal us, with certainty, the existence of a clearly individualized god-or-demon. Some are common nouns, others are epithets which designate a general quality, others lastly are only geographical adjectives.

This is why we will endeavor , in this modest essay, to release the parallels in question, in order to find the true god-or-demons of druidism, and to avoid the duplicates.

This work of divine synthesis was besides one of the great researches of druidic theology.

Lug was for example the regrouping of several “lugoues “. What is enough to explain the plural (lugoues) in an inscription of Avenches in Switzerland, and the plural dative lugovibus in two other inscriptions, in Osma in Tarraconense Spain as well as in Bonn (Germany). The lug (oues) are all the god-or-demons of Lug type gathered or concentrated under the same label, expressed into one theonym.

It seems well also that there was similarly several Eponas. Besides some documents make us clearly having a presentiment there exists a plurality of Eponas. Not to mention a dedication of Romania (Sarmizegetusa, today Varhely) which is aimed at “the Eponas“ we can see, on the stele of Hagondange, in France, two female riders represented on the right and on the left of a central goddess-or-demoness sitting in an armchair. A block of Strasbourg shows Mercury framed with two Eponas who head for in contrary direction.

All what the primordial druids had sought in the multiples Lug or Epona, and others, were thus grasped again by the belief in one Lug, one Épona, and so on. The same phenomenon undoubtedly existed Islamic lands with Allah (synthesis of Hubal, Al Rahman, Manat, etc.).

* Editor’s note. We underline the word “approaches “because it says well what it wants to say. The monotheism of druidism is a monotheism of result, philosophical and well thought out, and not a dogmatic monotheism or of revelation (sic). In short monism!

** Its saint our Christian friends would say.

SHORT HISTORY OF DRUIDIC IDEAS.

- 4.000 or - 3.000 before our era: invasion of the “Steppe-Riders “(Indo-Europeans) in the West of Europe. Through cultural integration of the local prehistoric populations, they give the Celts (other theses make Celts the first farmers going up the valley of the Danube).

Common characteristics: vegetable, animal or human sacrifices, to maintain cosmic order. Doctrines of the individual salvation resulting in the reincarnation, not in this world, but in the other. Deep belief, religious formidable obviousness, which dominates the society just like (druidic) philosophy.

Recognition of a higher immanent Being, transcending the various god-or-demons (called Tokad in medieval druidism). In other words, the Fate, either it is universal or individual (destiny).

At the time when took place among certain “Aryan “people with the linguistic meaning of the term, a true passage from the mythical thought to the strictly materialist thought and to scientistic philosophy, decisive choices took place, which determine still today all our ways of thinking.

The primordial druids themselves, always seem to evoke our unconscious frames of mind, and all what escapes our action.

We can leave this world only by escaping ourselves through a free choice of the deity, or a fight against oneself (spiritual exercises, meditations, hypnotic ecstasy, martial arts like the Celtic wrestling; riastrades, archery, etc). In short, what the more or less sincere defenders of Islam call “the great Jihad!”

This escape the man seeks with his entire being, and that the warrior tries, true druids discovered it spontaneously: here the whole abstract genius of Celtism comes out. Deprived of these too precise images that the action provides to warriors, the impetus of the primordial druids remains spontaneous, unexpressed, almost unconscious, according to our language. And nevertheless, its instinctive assertions are a true rise towards the unknown: they penetrate the soul of the things, separate the being from its appearances, scan its depths. The innate confidence of the druid affirms first the incomparable effectiveness of his religious act. It concentrates on the almost magic, or at the very least ritual, word, of the sacrifice, the whole value of the existence: the notion of divinity springs out from this psychic condensation. The druid reaches the divine one by an instinctive act of abstraction where his will of sovereignty asserts itself. But the fight against oneself also has this frightening power. The druids call upon our inner lucidity; upon our will, upon the experiment of body activity. It is deep inside us that both will find this unity of principle of the bitos or of the universe, its unique and total substance.

The soul for them was initially only the vital breath (anatla); they will see there soon the intimacy of each one, each thing, the same universal and divine principle of every being and of the universe (anamone).

This confidence, this impetus towards the being, towards the universal including, is the feeling of divine fulness which penetrates the dominating religious elite OF THIS TIME.

The bases of this evolution appear at the beginning of the first thousand years before our era. The “Aryan “priests in Central Europe entered at that time an imposing undertaking: through sacrificial rituals, they intended to harmonize Mankind and World, microcosm and macrocosm.

For this purpose druids developed a thought of a new type, made of symbols and abstractions. The reference points were put for an incipient philosophy, initially groping, but which will influence in a decisive way all the later religious thought in Europe (including popular Christianity). The search of the unit beyond the multiplicity of the appearances, the design of a Universal Including Everything, the doctrines of the rebirths in the next world or Vindomagos (Mag Meld etc.), the notion of blossoming through knowledge, the monist approach of the polytheism of prehistoric shamans (the god-or-demons were conceived differently, as forces but also or values. Some formerly important were relativized). The question of the immortality of the soul, the anamone, and of its survival after death, as well as that of the ways of final melting in the Big Whole; was placed in the middle of the concerns of the educated higher class of the populations (druids and certain princes or great lords).

The monist doctrines of the multiple states of the being (i.e., of the unity between the individual being - the anamone - and the absolute immanent being) which emerged from this intellectual fermenting; and individual experiments of such a mystical union in Shamanic initiations; combined during the first thousand years before our era to give one of the major bases of druidic religion. The druidism therefore left the slow melting of the Neolithic Shamans and of the Aryan priests. The worships

resulting from this melting did not cease evolving to give rise to various philosophical schools which, together, constitute the druidism. The druids began to seek a form of religious expression accessible to all the men, to the kings and to the warriors, to the craftsmen, to the stock breeders and to the farmers, etc. Several tendencies came out indeed in the society. The druidism extends to the 2/3 of Europe and to a part of Asia Minor (the Galatian dikastes) while adapting with flexibility to a whole mosaic of ethnic groups and cultures. The unit formed an open religious system, not ceasing growing according to the conquests due to the ambicatus (to the ambicatusian ver sacrum) or to the bagaudae according to the historian Maurice Bouvier-Ajam. Beside the primitive tribal monolatries, the simplistic dualisms (God/Devil) and the fruitfulness rituals, the worship of the Great Goddess-or-Demoness, or of the Great fairy if it is preferred; a highly abstract philosophy, and extreme spiritual exercises (druidic yoga in the way of Hornunnos, since he was a great Shaman, riastrade, martial arts, Celtic wrestling, contemplation of the tree of life, etc.); what possibilities this apparently unlimited opening didn't offer to the search of infinite and the endless development?

The immediate and intuitive experiment of unity which is the mystical experiment, this intuition of the great unity which removes the break subject/object, was even then got; by various drugs inherited from the soma of the Aryans making it possible “to see “the god-or-demons.

The alcohol of drinks or the brew of certain toadstools were two of them, and made it possible to everybody to experiment changes or widening of the awareness, the impression of an exit from oneself, such as Huxley described it under mescaline.

Unity of the self with nature, with the cosmos, with the substance of this world, with the “life “in a cosmic vitalistic instinctual or cosmic visionary prospect (the Bitos).

The heathen or the pagani were also all those who are established in their terroir, their tribe or their nation, or who attach a great importance to this notion of “national life “(ethno-differentialism and natio-ethnism).

On the stone benches or exedras of the sanctuary of Lenus Mars, in Trier, in Germany, inscriptions had been engraved on the interior side, and at the top of backs of the benches.

“ In honorem domus divinae marti et ancamnae et genio paganorum pagi teucoriatis securus illius pagi libertus et secundius primulus antistes donum dederunt.”

“In honor of the divine house, of Mars and Ancamna, and of the genius of the pagani of the county Teucoriatis, Securus, freed slave and Secundius Primulus priests, gave that. “

“In honor of the divine house, of Mars and Ancamna, and of the genius of the pagani of the county Vilciatis, C.S. made that posed further to a vow.“

These exedras and their inscriptions (translation without prejudice, my 7 years of Latin are far) show the integration of the worship of a native national egregore in the (Roman) official religion of the town of Trier.

Dedications offered by T.F.I. Postuminus and putting different pagi (counties)under the protection of the local Mars. The date of the decree of the decurions is 135 of our era, according to the mentioned consuls. “ Some honorary statues were raised with their ornaments, in gratitude with regard to T.F.I. Postuminus. The latter has indeed, with generosity, promised to make statues of Mars Mullo and of the deities of the pagi, raised in the basilica of the sanctuary of Mars Mullo “.

The inscription CIL XIII, 3148 is a dedication in the honor of the Divine House and the pagus (county) Matans, to Mars Mullo. It comes from L. Campanius Priscus and Virilis his son, priests of Rome and Augustus, who made a statue of the god-or-demon Mullo, with all his ornaments, placed here at their expenses.

The inscription CIL XIII, 3149 comprises the same dedication to the same Mars Mullo, coming from the same characters, in the honor of the pagus Sextanmanducus.

The inscription CIL XIII, 3150 contains a dedication to Mars Vicinnus, in the honor of the pagus Carnutenus, coming from the same character.

The three previous inscriptions make it possible to restore but also to give its whole meaning to the inscription CIL, 3151, which contained a dedication in the honor of the Divine House and of a pagus, to Mars… by the same character.

When the emotional tie came in the foreground, that gave the henotheism in the way of Mogh Roith : “de druadh, mu dhe tar gac nde“ (roughly: “there are many god-or-demons, but my god-or-demon is most important “).

The druids came to think that all these god-or-demons were perhaps only the various components of the same higher reality, the unnamed ultimate including (Bitos) symbolized thereafter by the cosmic cauldron (Pariollon). Various components of the same higher reality in the sense that they were second causes compared to the main cause, or some assistants of the Fate . The central idea was that the second cause only acts driven by the Main cause. This one is the cause of that the operative virtue of the second cause is applied to the action. It is therefore the infinite effectiveness of the Main cause which gives its last meaning to similar metaphysics. This effectiveness radiates through each being. It is the butterfly effect of poetic justice because everything is tied together in the universe.

The rich person and the powerful ones, the chiefs of the tribe, the great lords, continue nevertheless to regularly sacrifice to the god-or-demons human beings themselves in certain circumstances delimited well by the druids, of the type Iphigenia in Aulis or delayed execution of sentenced to death for very serious crime, like the murder of a foreigner, for example; more usually cattle or other animals, and to give to their close relations banquets of more or less great importance. Beer libations are then carried out in aid of the underground deities, the gigantic anguiped wyverns that people will call later fomorians in Ireland (andernas on the Continent). As for the celestial gods themselves the smoked of certain cremations is reserved to them (Genesis 4,4. God is not vegetarian *).

The heart of the shrine, Latin cella , is the occasional seat of the deity, invisible from outside and nevertheless near to all the men. Teuo xtonion says precisely the inscription of Vercelli in Italy….

The deity appears inside the sanctuaries or the temples on walls bearing as many frescos (as that which represented Ogmius in the area of Marseilles according to the witness of Lucian of Samosata. Introductory lecture Heracles 1-7) or in various niches sheltering simulacra or arcana (Sanskrit word) of the god-or-demons (some statuettes), which makes it possible to make their acting present. Because the myths come to live in the representations we meet by going around the cella of the temple in the clockwise direction. The non-druid Celt advances generally only up to there. He obtains there that for what he generally comes, the favor of an aisling (vision: Constantine for example in Andesina - today Grand - the most beautiful temple of the world, in 309).

He can contemplate the diversity and the central deep unity which transcends it. He puts an ateberta or offering in or near the sacred fountain spring well or basin : some fruits, some amber, some products of his work, some coins when it is a spring or a well, a candle. And even a small wine amphora, symbolizing blood, that he gives up as is, or from which he pours the contents in an adapted place, after having opened it or to have broken ritually the neck of it. Perhaps with a gesture similar to that which consists in “cracking open “a bottle of champagne, nowadays.

As for the animals of his farm he locks up them in a place reserved for this purpose not far from the cella of the temple : the sacrarium **.

For the common people, for the poor or the simple dagolitoi (believers), to take and give, have here symbolic value. It is generally in this case small atebertas, seldom important offerings. You do not come in front of the god-or-demon empty-handed, that’s all. It is famous Sanskrit “dadami se dehi me “: I give you so that you give me (the deity is then in a way forced to give tit for tat).

Expression coarsely translated by the Latin people with their “do ut des “.

The ateberta or offering is indeed only a sign: the true sacrifice, subjacent, it is the pure heart ready to be given, even to devote itself up to the supreme sacrifice.

Then the visitor will leave the premises. The cella of a temple in a sanctuary is not a place where the believers linger. It is the place of the invocation, of the offering and the vision. That’s all!

You may, on the other hand, stay longer in the courtyard of the sanctuary surrounding the cella. People sit down there in the ambulatory or in the shade of the guardian trees (an oak ?) growing nearby , in order to think there in peace.

N.B. All the field of the sanctuary is in reality a sacral space. People proceed to ritual ablutions (sacred spring, pool, etc.) before approaching its cella. If it is a richly decorated temple, on the enclosure which delimits its sacred space are various symbols (heads, skulls, weapons, shields, etc.) the wood totems

delimiting its entrance are carved: ornaments, plants, animals, men, air genies and other god-or-demons and form even sometimes as a true gate.***

* It goes without saying the traditional explanation of this episode by Judeo-Islamic-Christianity ..... is based on nothing, on nothing present in our text in any case. Pure speculations !

** It goes without saying that all that is alive is then recovered by the gutuaters or gutumaters assigned to this sanctuary in order to be there then ritually consumed or shared with the gods.

*** Then, then, well decadence and fast decline at the beginning of our era. The druidism comes very close to a complete extinction AND FALLS INTO A COMA (loss of consciousness,bursting, of the tradition, which disperses a little everywhere, disappearance of the last druids conscious of being so, etc.).

The last irreducible are announced not in the Gaulish village of Asterix but in Ireland in the Court of the prince Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill (O' Neill) king of Ailech from 943 to 980 and Ard Ri Érenn from 956 to 980. At least it is what we can deduce from the existence still at the time, in the repertory of the great Irish “poets,” of the imbas forosnai of the teinm loida and of the dichetal do chennaib, however prohibited by St Patrick (cf. the tale of the plunder of the castle of Maelmilscothach by Errard Mac Coisé, a poet having lived in the 10th century).

Do ratath tra do Mael Milscothach iartain cech ni dobrethaigsid suide sin etir ecnaide 7 fileda 7 brithemna la taeb ogaisic a crech 7 is amlaidsin ro ordaigset do tabairt a cach ollamain ina einech 7 ina sa[ru]gad acht cotissad de imus forosnad [di]chetal do chollaib cend 7 tenm laida .i. comenclainn fri rig Temrach do acht co ti de intreide sin FINIT.

PREHISTORY OF THE DRUIDISM AND, THEREFORE, OF THE CELTIC NEOPAGANISM.

Neo-paganism is the name often given to such a resurgence, particularly when it appears in the dominant cultures in Europe or America.

The word “pagan “comes from Latin “paganus“ and means literally “peasant “. At the beginning of our era, when Christianity was still especially a religion of cities, the not yet Christian ones, country dwellers, were called “pagani“(= peasants).

A linguistic fact strictly similar to that of the word “heathen “(word for word “living in a moor “) used in Great Britain to designate the men or the women living these hostile and poor environments (heath in British English).

In the areas of Western Europe or Northern Europe, belonging to the Roman Empire, in the process of Christianization, the majority of these “heathen “or “pagani “practiced a religion ; stemming by evolution due to the Celtic conquests, from the Neolithic worships; closely related to the agricultural cycles. It was a religion “with goddess-or-demoness “or “fairy “in this the most eminent aspect of the divine one was in their homes represented in a female form (characteristic that it shared besides with the very first forms of Greco-Roman religion). Among Celts for example the goddess Danu (bia). While also having a male aspect of the divinity, represented in the shape of a god-or-demon Taran/Toran/Tuireann ?????]. Whose life cycle was completed but also renewed each year, in connection with the movements of the sun and the cycles of the vegetation. This religion of the earth in its globality (of the Litavis) or of the ground of the cultivated clearing (Talantio/Tailtiu, called Rosemartha on the Continent) was characterized by the emphasis it put on the experiment, immanence, transcendence. From the point of view of the doctrines, we may notice that it could, therefore in fact had, to be one of the multiple access roads to the divine one.

N.B. The Indo-Europeanization phenomenon induced by the Celtization, had as a result to increase the importance of the male partner of this goddess (Taran/Toran/Tuirean) to even reverse a little everywhere their primitive hierarchy (that of the Mount Bego Mount and of the valley of Marvels in the Alps); except in certain remote areas (some islands like that of Strabo’s Namnetes for example).

LET US GO BACK INDEED EVEN FURTHER AND THEREFORE QUITE BEFORE THE DRUIDS THEMSELVES.

It is proved that Neandertal buried his dead. Two series of vestiges besides show that for approximately at least 20.000 years, men have had activities or thoughts turned to the hereafter: they are the images and the statuettes, the burials and the funerary monuments.

We know a good forty burials made by the men of the Mousterian civilization, from Middle East to Europe.

We found about twice more skeletons buried during the last glacial period in Europe, between 4000 and 10.000 before our era, by prehistoric men very similar to us, the men of Cro-Magnon. Certain caves are decorated with prehistoric paintings and engravings like these of Lascaux, which go back to 17.000 years. These quiet animals; powerful like bisons, fast like horses, feared like the bears and the cat-like ones, perhaps admired even coveted, like the mammoths and the woolly rhinoceroses, pursued like the reindeers in herds; are neighborly with strange human figures: Shamans or disguised hunters. The animal, source of life for the Man, appears to dominate his world, his dreams and his beliefs.

There are 6.000 to 8.000 years, enormous blocks of stone, called megaliths, were raised or arranged the ones on the others by the first rural societies. They constituted sanctuaries in which were put to be honored there, worthy people, or ancestors, of the first settled villages. Several hundred of these stones are still nowadays existing. It is in Western Europe that we find oldest of these monuments and

probably most spectacular: in the Iberian peninsula, in France, in British Isles, in North Germany and in Denmark.

Some of these stones, laid out in tables or dolmens, are tombs, protected by a mass of broken stones called mounds, surrounded by walls (for example Newgrange). The funerary room is sometimes decorated with figures of mother goddess-or-demoness, images of the fertility as well as drawings of ground-stone axes, bows, sticks, symbols of the male power.

Other patterns seem to designate natural forces: moon, water, wind, ground, sun. Very old indeed are also the manifestations of the solar worship. The innumerable figurations of the wheel, of the swastika which is the simplification of it, all figurations kept by the Celts and ad infinitum repeated on the most varied objects, show it.

The standing stones called menhirs, are contemporary of the portal tombs. The ones and the others presenting identical patterns, in particular the axe and the stick, we suppose that the standing stones played a part in various ceremonies of the megalithic religion.

Largest was in Loc Mariaquer, and weighed 350 tons. We may imagine the imposing ceremonies which were to take place within monumental frameworks like Carnac alignments.

Has given, in druidism, the stones like the Stone of Scone or of Fal (Lia fail), called linga in India.

The pre-Indo-European priests (Hornunnos was a shaman or a great wizard) very early felt that everything started from an intimate union of the soul and of matter; viewed by them (before the druidism appears) as a union of the Sky and of the Earth.

When the gods or demons, on whom everything depends, decides to cause, in the procedure, an unexpected exceptional event (birth of a monster, particular dream, strange layout of the entrails of a sacrificed animal…) ; it is that they intend to draw the attention on a decision taken by them, hidden but visible in this event.

PANCELTIC AND METAPHYSICAL GOD-OR-DEMONS.

It is understood through metaphysical or panceltic god-or-demons, those whose action and fame exceed the area and the sanctuary, to become more general. The worship of Belin/Belen for example was established little by little where existed topical god-or-demons, endowed with a strong healing power. When pre-Celtic spirituality resisted well, the worship remained that of [the Mothers or of] the local teutates, but where druidism overcame, the worship of Belin/Belen developed.

“ To you alone [druids] it is given the gods and celestial powers to know or not to know “ (Lucan, Pharsalia/Civil war, 1,450).

It sounds a bit like what Jung said about religion in 1937. "The careful consideration and observation of certain dynamic factors, understood to be “powers,” spirits, demons, gods, laws, ideas, ideals or whatever name man has given to such factors as he has found in his world powerful, dangerous or helpful enough to be taken into careful consideration, or grand, beautiful and meaningful enough to be devoutly adored and loved” (Gustav Jung Psychology and Religion 1937).

Caesar adds: “ They likewise discuss and impart to the youth many elements [.....] respecting the nature of things, respecting the power and the majesty of the immortal gods“ (Caesar. B.G. VI, 13).

But what have we today to draw from the reading of the adventures, apparently coherent, logical and complete, of these foreign god-or-demons who are the god-or-demon of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (phew!) ; the baby Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Mary, Adam and Eve, and so on. The Bible of the Jews does not even insist on the immortality of the soul.

We have, on the other hand, a huge profit to draw from the study and meditation of the myths on which spirituality of the former druids fed.

God without a capital letter is, in many languages, a word of Indo-European origin (deivos or Devos, dia in Ireland) meaning “superhuman luminous being “.

At the druids, this word did not at all designate the higher Being. It is following a mistranslation of the Septuagint Bible (specialists translated by the Greek word theos = god, what it was necessary to translate by Fate); that the first Christians also used this word, to express the notion of higher Being.

The mistake of the translators in question is explained by the fact their higher god-or-demon had rather indeed the dimensions of a small tribal god-or-demon, and not these of a Universal Including Everything. From where, in their mind, considering their superiority feeling compared with the goim/pagans, confusion with the Aryan notion of deiwos.

The god-or-demons are conceived as personal beings, but of whom we cannot more specify the nature: according to the peoples and the times, it is more or less close to that of Mankind.

Secondary causes, children or assistants of the Tokad or Fate, lord of the forests, celestial kings, friends of the men, spirit of truth! Whatever their names Jung would say, the god-or-demon symbolize at the same time the creating force and the destroying power, and are embodied in the sun or the moon, take animal shapes, or even that of natural phenomena.

The god-or-demons of druidism being only a distant evolution of the Indo-European god-or-demons, they are therefore at least 4000 years old, and even more for some of them. The figure of the female central great goddess-or-demoness goes back still probably further in time, and the figure of Hornunnos [the primordial high wizard chief of the clan. Editor’s note] probably appears as of the Neolithic era (Cave of the Trois-Freres ).

They are the heroes of the stories and legends handed down by the bards and the veledae (the more they knew stories, the more they were promoted in a way. To become ollamos, 350 stories had for example to be known at least: 7 times 50).

These mythological accounts were little by little written down starting from the 7th century in Ireland by the monks.

The fact remains that it is almost impossible to get a final and peremptory representation of this druidic Panth-eon, of which the main characteristic is the ambiguity or the fuzziness with regard to its trifunctional nature.

The idea of a Celtic Panth-eon, similar to the Greco-Roman Panth-eon, hardly finds confirmation indeed. The table outlined by Caesar, doubtful in its exactitude, appears additionally very incomplete when it is compared with archeological documents. The Celtic god-or-demons appear much less characterized by specialized functions than by the expansion of their worship. Almost all the indigenous deities are, at various levels, protective deities. This versatility ascribed by the believers to the majority of the deities spread out all over the territory suggests invincibly that the original,

philosophical and thought out, monotheism, of the druids (sic again), philosophical and thought out monotheism being able to appear as a trinity; was loath essentially to the polytheism of the Greco-Roman type.

From there the surface nature of the similarities established initially by Caesar. From there too the partial failure to which is doomed any attempt to establish strict functional equivalences between Celtic god-or-demons, and Greco-Roman [or Germanic. Editor’s note]. god-or-demons.The healing function for example, is not the prerogative of such series of deities, who would match the Greek god-or-demon Apollo; because we would also often find in this role,some god-or-demons who were compared with Mars. Conversely, such god-or-demon compared to our dear Apollo, is called upon by the warriors. The Celtic god-or-demons, nominally brought together with Mars, have the most varied roles. Guard of time and of the motion of the stars, “Mars “ presides over sacred springs, lakes, brooks and confluences; in turn healer and guarantor of survival, this druidic Mars is protective of the social groups just like of ordinary people! Another example: Hercules-Ogmius is also a healing god-or-demon.

The conclusion to retain from these observations is therefore that of the absence of real parallelism between the Greco-Roman [and Germanic. Editor’snote ] religion and that of the druids of the last time of independence.

And too bad for the hard-line partisans of the Dumezilian Aryanism or Indo-Europeanism, either they are of old right wing or of new right-wing, of extreme right wing or of liberalist right wing, OR OF ELSEWHERE! See the attempts of the Soviet historians on the matter! The Celtic god-or-demons, revised by the druids, are very different from the German, Greek, Roman or Indian god-or-demons! Let it be said once and for all!

Dumezil sufficiently deplored it besides in his time. The structures of the trifunctional Panth-eon were seriously and durably disturbed following the exchanges between the conquering Celts and the populations who were previous ti them. It is the least we may say indeed.

Certain authors go even so far as to speak about a general animism. With little individualized god-or-demons, endowed with multiple functions, abstract powers, so to speak, expressed by the physical phenomena; and some protective of the social groups, genies, without marked personality.

This proves that the important thing, for the druids, was always the Immanent One, transcending and synthesizing all these deities (the Fate ?? The Par-God ?) , from where the true dissolution by them of the Aryan trifunctionality, which they had begun by inheriting at the beginning of their history.

Let the reader allow me to insist by emphasizing ! If the Pan-Celtic god-or-demons are in general skillful, and if trifunctionality is less obvious there than elsewhere; it is because the druids always knew that in last analysis, and ultimately, all these deities referred to the higher god-or-demon. To the god-or-demon of the god-or-demons, to the god-or-demon of the druids who is not named (Mogh Roith : “de druadh, mu dhe tar gac nde“), in short to the higher Being (cf. El Elyon of the Bible).

As Henry Lizeray himself notices it in his S.D.D., this eternal problem of the relationships of the unity with the number is, of course, that which from time immemorial challenged human intelligence; since what is One appears sometimes multiple to us. The day which lights the earth is for example perpetual and single, but on our planet, what men see, it is sometimes the night, sometimes the day, what is not the same thing.

In any event, the druidic Panth-eon or Pleroma is a gigantic headache, a puzzle of which are missing more half of the pieces, and these we have are in disarray. The thing was wanted by former druids themselves (see their taboo on the writing). Because that thus force us to make an effort of reconstitution and of insight, much more advantageous than the passive contemplation of a complete unit already assembled would be it.

PETER LANCE AND THE CELTIC MESSIANISM.

Preliminary foreword.

We previously saw with the case of Fenius Farsaid what it was necessary to think of the concept of predestination of the Celtic minded communities of people, based on the language, on the superiority of the languages of Celtic origin, on the fact that the druids speak the very language of the gods, according to Diodorus of Sicily (they are homophonon). The Celts do not form a chosen people but their language is a incontestably a language according to them (traditional case of ethnocentrism therefore, which helps to live).

The following study is essentially drawn from a book by the great French celtologist Peter Lance, “the defeat of Alesia “ published by the 7th Aurore Publishing, Po Box. 253. 75.024 Paris Cedex 01.

This study does not claim therefore being the faithful and complete reflection of the general design of Peter Lance, that Peter DeLaCrau discovered while landing in Paris in 1977. But only aims, with supporting quotations, to shed a new light on certain aspects of the thought of this example of contemporary celtism. Unless otherwise specified, every quotation will be extracted therefore from this Defeat of Alesia by Peter Lance. N.B. Peter Lance wrote in an admirable French, which is obviously not the case of Peter DeLaCrau. He hopes therefore to have well understood everything. Titles and subtitles are from the managing editor.

I) IMPORTANCE OF THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PEOPLES AS REGARDS SPIRITUALITY.

For Peter Lance ,a people could not be reduced to the simple collection, addition or multiplication, of the individuals living a given territory. The idea of homeland could not indeed be based only on the geographical place of our birth. The concept of homeland is based on a language, a culture, a human environment, founded on affinities, consequently on a social structure, in harmony with our deep tendencies, at least relatively.

Moreover, Peter Lance adds, “a nation is not formed only on a simple union of the bodies. So that men are united, it is necessary they adopt certain ideas jointly. People are united on something (on a program we would say today). And these ideas do not appear randomly.

They arise from the temperaments, and therefore suppose affinities, the fact for the men who join around them to have“ a lot in common “. Because what is important , it is that a given historical people, whatever the racial elements which constituted it, has, at a given time, created a certain social and moral structure; an ethical code and a type of civilization, in accordance with our own aspirations “.

For Peter Lance the thus defined mythology is one of the basic structures of every history. “The modern historians began to see that it was nothing more instructive, to understand the destiny of a people, than the study of its mythology. And I will say better: without mythology, History has no sense; it is only a cold nomenclature of accidents without real meaning as for the destiny of the men. Because the souls are more important than the facts. A historian who wants to be neither a mythologist, nor a psychologist, is only a bare collector of fossils. The power of the mythology which fills a people with life, therefore determines its historical existence “. According to Peter Lance, each people therefore has natural predispositions, bringing it in such or such direction, rather than in such or such other. An ethnic group, like an individual, expresses a temperament, which more particularly predisposes it to certain functions. As long as this ethnic group is homogeneous, it is necessary for him obviously to ensure alone, and more or less well, the various activities the development of a society requires. It will undoubtedly do it, but while necessarily privileging, the functions for which it is best endowed, and by fulfilling only very imperfectly and “at the very least “ these of which it does not have the vocation.

In short, if a man lives solitary, it will be necessary for him at the very same time to plow his field, to build his house, to weave his clothing, and he will undoubtedly be better in such activity that in such other. If he then joins two others with different tastes, and I guarantee that you will see soon a trio formed of a plowman of a mason and of a weaver, at least for the main part of their work. It is schematically the same thing for the peoples, and this psychological constant will have, in the event of mixture, enormous consequences pushing to the specialization. As from the moment when it is formed, by means of war [Editor’s note : or of any human phenomenon] , a non-homogeneous society with various components, each one will more radically follow his inclination and his preference. The choice of the easy way remains a biological law.

The one who has the opportunity of performing his “most" of course will not bother to try his “least “and will readily leave it to others. That is true in the professional field.

The late Leone Bourdel was the organizer of a laboratory of careers guidance to which this psychologist devoted many years of research and studies (assisted by her colleague Jacques Gennevay); relating to the vocational aptitudes inherent in the four main blood groups (A, B, AB, O). If we now work out with these few data a small ethno-vocational synthesis, we will be brought to note that, for example, a strong proportion of the ancestors of the Prussians (German in Berlin) had an innate vocation for the military and police force career. And that, for example, a large proportion of the ancestors of the Italians in Apulia (oriental party of the former kingdom of Naples) had an innate vocation for bureaucracy, legalism and political game […] That is true also in the field of the spirituality which is timeless, and expresses the permanency of a temperament through the ages, the constancy of a certain psychological attitude […]

Man makes his gods [or-demons] in his image, in the image of the deep down of himself. The great heroes he reveres and on whom he models himself are more eloquent on his nature than all the examinations of others, and the old legends with which he is amazed count more for his future than all the laws of his doctors. Each being, each nation, has its own logic.

Every people is in search of a design of the divinity which is proper to him, and generates its particular god-or-demons, it naturally regards as most interesting. The only ones truthful and right , in its case “.

For Peter Lance peoples are therefore the only realities counting in the development of the divine figures. The people is always the material support, the bodily cover, of ethics and philosophies. Each people for example has its own view of good and evil.

An ethics doesn’t impose: it rises from the temperament; it is the result of a certain metabolism, of a particular bio-psychological evolution. Druids did not invent Celtic individualism: it was flesh and people, and they were not born from it 1).

That is true also for the views of the divinity.

Each people is always the body of a certain idea of God, which is the source of as many vital tensions. These ambitions, these tensions, these imaginations, which are the base of paganism. Deify his own ambitions and his wills, by personifying them, or by projecting them over supernatural beings able to cross, all the obstacles of space and time; it was the means for the Man of raising ad infinitum his own potentialities, the means of drawing himself as the string of a bow, in order to aim at the highest goals. And in that, the science fiction of today, which takes us away in fabulous universes, by endowing us with immense powers, is also a resurgence of paganism. A reaction against the belittling of the individual and the mediocrity modern society generates. These ambitions, these tensions, these imaginations, which are the base of paganism, are also the base of art, from where it results that there is no art without paganism, nor paganism without art 2).

The deity, in this case, is only the projection of a determined group of men, the externalization of a particular human community, and this view of the deity, in return, fills with life and enhances the individuals in question. The power of the mythology which motivates and underlies a people and constitutes the expression of its deep down oneself, determines its historical existence.

Of what is composed a mythology? Of several visible elements, which we will define as follows: a) a Panth-eon, b) a symbolic system c) a series of model-heroes d) a body of legendary accounts e) a sub-panth-eon together with popular superstitions and a distorting worship. This last category, which provides an occupation for most people and leaves most traces, is, of course, the less significant.

In addition to the visible elements which have just been enumerated, a mythology includes three invisible elements, underlying, and which are in a way the root of it: a) a certain design of the world, b) philosophical doctrines, c) a morality and a social behavior. These elements are essential and are the base of the whole, are seldom explicitly defined, and must be guessed through the visible elements of mythologies.

Mythology is for each people a force asserting being, denying death. Religious power in a strict sense of the word, true divine spirit, this mythology is expressed in esthetics, art, ethics.

We know since Jung myths are the representation of the dreams, fears and desires of the unconscious collective. And that this expression of the ethnic temperament – amplifying this one still by the popular repetition through the generations - explains the behavior of this people in the various circumstances he will go through. Here is what gives again to mythology its true role. It is not strictly speaking “History “ but it expresses the intimate reactions of a people to the historical events, it shows the impact the facts have in the bottom of the souls, what they bring about there, causes there, starts there. Mythology is therefore infinitely more than History. Any people must continue to venerate his particular gods, to remain faithful to its mythology, under penalty of decay , and soon of destruction. A man who disavows his primary vocation, who forgets his ideal and his dreams of a teenager, prepares

himself his decline. A nation which lives no longer in harmony with its original myths, slips on the way of the defeat, of the disorder, and of the decline. And naturally that is true also of a civilization.

In other words, when a people loses the certainty to have the only mythology of worth in the world, or when it begins to think that it is perhaps not most valuable, then it degenerates. What occurred to the Indo-Europeans of Germanic or Latin, type, etc. As long as people, on the other hand, continues to remain impervious to the other god-or-demons, to implacably reject the other designs of the divinity, it remains and survives. Because they are always permanent human types, a few centuries of history could not modify. Let us repeat it once again: not only the mixture of the types in the same national crucible never leads them to merge, but quite on the contrary, specialization through affinity separates them always more in closed containment impervious the ones to the others. And therefore each one ends up unconsciously gathering the descendants of the same clan. As opposed to what thoughtless people repeat, either to deplore it, or to be delighted with it, not only the ethnic types do not disappear, but they do not cease being accentuated or being differentiated within our heterogeneous modern societies. The Indo-Europeans founded ascending civilizations only where the tripartite system was put in check, and this one is characteristic of the Indo-European society only when this one is declining. Besides it could not be quite the opposite. The farmer and the craftsman, who are the spiritual fathers and the precursors of the scientist and of the artist, are the only creators of civilization.

What I would like especially to highlight , it is that the tripartite system, i.a. the division of the society in three relatively closed classes; priests, warriors, farmers, craftsmen, with economic and political supremacy of the first two, and semi-enslaving of the third one; is a symptom of decline. As such it cannot appear at the origin of an ascending civilization, since it is on the contrary a sign of ageing and sclerosis. The societies George Dumezil and his School studied are not “in childhood “ societies but contrary dying societies.

Peoples different cannot therefore have the same view of the divinity, because the god-or-demons are the spirit of a people, his soul.

If these people precisely had the same view of the divinity, then it is that in fact, they would have become the same people. However this result can never be obtained by force, even when there is colonization by a foreign god-or-demon.

When it is said to me that Germanic, Roman and Celtic people, were not so different after all; that they had a common racial origin, that they have all been more or less warriors, more or less farmers, more or less clerics; I answer that this “more or less “is crucial. If we release from the whole of the activities communal to all the considered peoples, these where the preference tendencies of each one appear; no one will be able to deny that Latin is initially a man of letters, the Germanic initially a soldier and the Celt initially a “handyman “. That is not only registered with an irrefutable obviousness in twenty-five centuries of European history, but it is also the claim of those concerned themselves, the point where they put their pride, the place where they want to be admired. A Latin will always be proud of his codicils, a Germanic of his discipline, a Celt of his system of resourcefulness, and millennia will change nothing there. The sociological categories thus made up by men of different stocks will do nothing but accentuate, during time, the lack of harmony of the society, as well as the harshness of antagonisms; to lead periodically to the civil war and the revolution. As I have had already the opportunity to say it, the “civil wars “do not exist. They are always foreign wars between people who believe themselves to be of the same people and are not like this.

Indeed, any category of power having for base a non-native ethnic group, will have a completely unacceptable nature for the whole of the population. Independent Celts would undoubtedly have also had their priests and their aristocrats besides (they had them before the conquest); but, any wrong those can make to them, they had never become these odious inquisitors and these plundering despots that Romans and Germanic people were for them. The phenomena of “collaboration “with the occupier are not always due, as opposed to what often the resistance fighters and the hard-liners often believe, to cowardice or opportunism; but more generally to an attraction through affinities which has its roots in an unknown heredity. When there is conquest, the drama of the non-native who is unaware he is non-native is to have the choice only between two treasons, that of the official and visible homeland or that of the inner and ancestral homeland. Augustin Thierry lays here his finger, unknowingly, on the essential phenomenon of the selective segregation of the psycho-ethnic temperaments. Thus, when he speaks about the “defectors “who left the clan of the winners, to take up the cause of the overcome people, and whose movement is opposite of that of the “collaborators “ who endeavor on the contrary to pass in the dominant caste. Strangest is that this double movement is

the fact on which people generally rely on to say that there are melting of the ethnic groups and complete mixture of men of various origins. The peoples therefore remain bearers of god-or-demons, even colonized, even overcome by the force of arms. If we draw aside the fog of the speeches and the smoke of the “good intentions “to consider the real facts; it will be noted that each people on Earth tends today to a reaffirmation of his own culture, to an impassioned research of the sources of his history, to a new development of his original language. The disappearance of colonial empires, the general decline of illiteracy and the considerable development of television, can only intensify, in each country, the increasingly precise and complete practice of the language of the aforementioned country. All the instruments of technological advances, of which people want to persuade us that they prepare the unity of the world, work in fact for its disparity. It is true that the means of communication and of distribution will make it possible to the people to better get informed the ones on the others. But this, well far from leading them to merge, quite the reverse will lead them to be distinguished even to be separated from each other, only means they will have to assert their own being 3). With due respect to the fanatics of the “all together “ ethnic and national personalism is an infinitely more promising factor of peace, than the various theories of leveling.

II) MU DHE TAR GAC NDE SUPERIORITY OF THE “GOD-OR-DEMON“ OF DRUIDS, SUPERIORITY OF THE CELTIC “GOD-OR-DEMON “.

Druidic religion is therefore, as we saw it, the sublimation of the spirit of the Celtic people, and of no one other.

It should be noted that the druidic institution seems to have had for purpose to lead the Celts to express clearly and to live consciously, the philosophical and moral implications of their mythology. Druidism was not less the agent of a high philosophy, and it was especially the federative tie of the tribes. Its original nature did not enable it to be accepted by the Roman Empire.

According to Peter Lance therefore the druidic philosophy of progressive personalization of the individual, which made the human being a kind of god-or-demon's apprentice was better. Let us say some fast words on “the great psychological models of its mythology “. Some words extracted naturally from the work of Peter Lance entitled “The Defeat of Alesia “.

The distortion of myths, if it is always done in the same direction, betrays a dominant feature of the character. Contrary to what can be made with the panth-eons of many peoples (and particularly with the Graeco-Roman and Germanic-Scandinavian Panth-eons, who were close to the Celts); it is difficult to draw up a hierarchical list of the Celtic god-or-demons. But this difficulty, alone, does not bring it to us an essential lesson: the highlighting of Celtic individualism? This undisciplined characteristic of Celtic mythology is alone extremely instructive. And if we need to translate into socio-political words this spiritual attitude, I would say it involves respect for the scale of values, together with the refusal of the scale of authorities. We will see besides how the own character of the great Celtic deities, confirms this point.

Lug is the representation of the physical light of the stars of our galaxy as much as of light of intelligence, reason and language, which expresses it. Here therefore the symbol that our ancestors had put above all the others: neither authority, neither strength, nor richness, but reason, reflection, creation and expression. The patroon saint of all the arts, all the inventions, and all the creative trades, Lug is the symbol even of the civilization.

His presence in the forefront of the druidic Panth-eon alone proves the ancient Celts were neither Barbarians nor primitive ones, but well the first true civilizing people of Europe. The importance of Lug was such for the Celts, who then occupied the major part of Europe [2/3?], that this symbol could only remain present everywhere in Western metaphysics, for very long centuries. Because he symbolizes the one who is logical and clear-headed, which distinguishes the consequences of all the acts; it is an intransigent critic who denounces faults, excesses, abuses, and who, when it is needed, rises against the habit and the authority, to warn the society. Because Lug does not keep secrets. He says all the truths he sees, he is the one who speaks. And this is why he will become Lucifer in Christian mythology, the light bearer, the rebellious angel who rises against the omnipotence of Jehovah.

The second “god-or-demon “will still show this abyss which separates Celtic mentality from Roman mentality.

He is named Belenus and Caesar makes him an Apollo. Belenus is the symbol of the solar light (not of the sun itself) and appears well in this way as the companion and the supplement of Lug, the stellar light. A symbol of harmony and beauty, he is the Master of the fine arts and of the cure.

Coming immediately after Lug-Mercury in the Panth-eon, he still emphasizes the attraction which the thought had on this people. Through Lug and Belenus, he wants to show the primacy of meditation, intuition, invention, reasoning, and esthetics, over all the other human concerns. A message which is undoubtedly of a great keen judgment, and of a true civilizing power.

Third god-or-demon of their Panth-eon, Mars the warrior gives his support. Still this Mars resembles only by far the one of the Romans. It is in reality several Celtic symbols this deity incorporates. Initially Teutatis. His name comprises the stem tuat or touta, which means people, tribe.

Teutatis is the father of the tribe, i.e., the Nation, the Homeland. We see already all the difference with the Latin Mars. Teutatis is a historical fact, a human reality: the land of our fathers. It is necessary to measure all the profundity of this teaching. Whereas the Latin Mars requires that we admire the soldier by principle, that we fight anywhere and for anything, and therefore appears as a god-or-demon of jack of all trades mercenaries; Teutatis on the contrary legitimates and ennobles only the patriotic war. That which protection requires.

According to Peter Lance, in classical (Western Judeo-Christian) or Muslim civilization, God designates what can be neither understood, neither judged, nor equalized, i.e., what, ultimately, humiliates, lowers, and discourages, the mind of the Man. What is just the opposite of these great symbolic figures in which ancient Celts projected themselves. Because these personalized ideals, that our modern rationalists persist to designate through the word “gods“ were only , for the Ancients, educational models, higher human standards, purified, even increased, proposed to admiration and imitation of the future generations. Celtica had the ideal-god-or-demons most intelligent in Europe.

I want to say the most suitable for exalting the creative power of the human mind, to develop the personality, to give it the moral means to resist each ponderousness and each obscurantism. The vocation of Celtica was to make the society for Mankind, and not Mankind for Society. We saw that the mythology of the Celts and the characters of the great deities of their Panth-eon, revealed a particular and incontestably original ethical code, compared with that the others Indo-European panth-eons express. This ethical code, of which the key words are: freedom, pride, individualism; models a behavior mainly centered on the reasoning and the speech. From this ethical code and this behavior, rose a certain design of life, a philosophy “.

III) PREDESTINATION OR DESTINY OF CELTIC PEOPLES.

Celts are therefore the predestined people holder of the best spirituality which is for Man. It is the true people “ bearing God “ in the noble sense of the term.

“Every name of people matches an idea or a certain psychological, philosophical, or political attitude, that the aforementioned people admits for itself or adopt, or that foreign peoples confer on it. For example, in the modern time the name of Soviet, risen from a certain political view, become the usual name of people which, History will say, was a time at the very doorstep of the conquest of the world […]

The name of the Celts originates in the syllable Kal or Gall, which evokes what hard is 4). Each people tends to honor in his own name his more eminent quality. The same word can have meant very well for the ones “the Solid one “and for the others “the Brilliant ones “. What we have to remember is that the men who created together the former civilization liked to think they were at the same time brilliant and solid, i.e., pure and hard.

It is this noble ambition which was going to preside over the birth of Europe, an enthusing Panth-eon, a high metaphysics.

Despite all the vicissitudes of History, this civilization will remain the ineradicable base of what it is agreed to call the West.

Here thus the people of which destiny will be sealed below the walls of Alesia. All its gods shout to us: Light! Thought! Word! Imagination! Invention! Freedom! Enthusiasm! Pride! Personality! Passion! And the last one to contain and safeguard all : Homeland!

To the loutish Janus, Mars and Jupiter, of the Romans, Celtica opposes Lug, the craftsman, poet and researcher, in love creator of the well thought , well said and well done, things; then Belenus, his young brother in light, prince of the esthetes and maker of health, the dispenser of harmony, beauty, color and fancy; even still Teutatis, the Father of the Nation.

IV) RESISTANCE AND PERMANENCE OF THE CELTIC GOD-OR-DEMONS.

Alesia, I repeat it, Peter Lance writes, is a center, a critical point, a moment of truth. It is a revealing explosion which should not only enable us to judge the many effects that it had, and which it has still, but also, and perhaps above all, the accumulated mistakes which made it possible.

And this is why, unlike the authors who made Alesia either their last, or their first chapter, I made it , myself, the middle of my book. Because it is necessary to dissect the before as well as the after Alesia, and to distinguish in one what announces the other.

The Celticman must find himself. But it would be quite fallacious to believe that the Celticmen of Alesia had not already lost themselves. And the unpleasant Julius, so hateful that he is really, could bring only the sanction of the Fate to a people of which the virtues were no longer already in very good health.

The disaster of Alesia could not be explained without a certain decline of the Celtic society. I say of Celtic society , and not of the Celticmen themselves, because I do not believe that the Celticman - and this is why I hope in him - ever was a declining being. Contrary to the Latinman, for example, who bears in him the decline as old habits, dying hard. The pre-Alesian Celtic society was already no longer completely the type of society which was appropriate for the ethics of the Celticmen as to their deep psychology. Therefore was missing to these men, during the Roman invasion, the faith and the enthusiasm it is necessary to defend the community with the whole necessary valiancy.

The great Celtic myths, all generating human progress, fertilized no longer the ethics of the Celticmen, and provided no longer to their civilization the necessary psychological energy.

In the last century of the prechristian era, we saw entering decline and little by little becoming damaged, what had made the spiritual richness of Celtica or of whole Celtic Europe. This sense of the individual or ethnic personality, that Rome was going to finish destroying radically, to give birth to the materialist and collectivist monster which, behind various masks, was going to reign over us until these days, inclusively. The druids, alas, had not drawn from the ethics of the Celtic people the whole philosophy their logic can extract from them. Or if they had done it, they did not know how to pass it to their pupils. However their vocation, to these druids, was to remain faithful to them, to trace the prolongations of them, to teach all the consequences of them, and to change into awareness what only an instinct was. If the pre-Alesian Celtic society had really been built on these bases, it could not have crumbled thus in front of Caesar, nor accepted the Roman state control as easily as it did it. In the last century of the prechristian era, Celtic civilization was not or was no longer, in harmony with its great myths. It was in rupture of ethics, i.e., declining. In short, we will say, the Celtic people was overcome and colonized by the Romans. Because the Romans, Peter Lance notices, multinational and imperialist, ignore the Homeland. Above family and City, they know only the State, and it is quite different. Their higher god [or demon] is Janus, the guard of all the doors, the holder of all the keys.

Who didn't recognize Latin soul through his loves? Aren't the first three symbols of Rome revealing? Janus (State), Mars (War), and Jupiter (Authority).

Rome was an anti-nation, an anti-people, an anti-civilization, the first totalitarian empire, father of all the political monsters that Europe underwent.

Rome, the most despicably materialist Society that Antiquity experimented (the prototype of a consumer society). The mind, in Rome, does not go up higher than Mercury, and Caesar has nothing better to offer to the Celtic poets, astronomers, and philosophers; whose civilization is so higher than that of Latinmen, that they cannot understand it. That they cannot even suspect it is a high civilization. It is hardly if the academics of today, spiritual children of the Romans, start to see it. The extraordinary longevity or resistance of the druidic tradition, made nevertheless the Celts able, according to Peter Lance, to build their civilization, get up it is true in Latin rags, but it is better perhaps to be disguised that not to be at all […] Celts absolutely did not resign themselves to the Roman society. They initially continued to resist it militarily, then they used it at the best of their interests, finally they corrected it, or transformed as much as possible according to their own genius.

Not without revolting against it each time it was necessary, and this, until the fall of the Roman Empire. Not only did the Celts pick themselves up, but they built the most prosperous nation of the Roman world, and later one of most influential of modern Europe. That alone is enough to prove that the event of Alesia did not change basically the Celts, but that it only disturbed their modes of expression as their social structures. Not to the extent of stopping their activity, but of destroying its harmony for many many centuries.

With regard to Celtic mythology, we already saw that it had survived perfectly under the basic equating by Latin polytheism. Camille Jullian, quoted by Peter Lance, us confirms it as follows: “But these gods

and these figures are only a part of the religion. We especially meet them in the public life of the cities or of their tribes: the monuments raised by popular piety show more resistance to the boost of the victorious gods, a larger faithfulness to the beliefs and the habits of the country. It is a goddess-or-demoness, or a fairy if it is referred, the great queen Epona, who provided the most beautiful example of vitality in the divine world of the West. Under this Celtic name, in the strange and gracious attitude which her images ascribe to her, sitting on a horse, a foal and a dog running at her sides, she continued during all the Empire to govern the stables and the arenas. Not only did she lose no one of her national worshippers, but the nature of her functions made her known in Italy as well as in the whole universe “.

Here Jullian does not see only the survival of the mythology of the Celts, but its persistence. So much so that we may wonder whether it did not go towards a resurgence, that Christianity alone was to stop (not without besides being impregnated by it in turn). It is what Jean-Jacques Hatt confirms: “Starting from the 3rd century, and even before the period of military anarchy, the Celts seem to return to their primitive beliefs. The indigenous god-or-demons, and in particular the ancient Teutatis, who had been banished by Romans, reappear in the inscriptions and on the illustrated monuments; it is the same thing with the ancient Taranis, wheeled god-or-demon, who reappears in the inscriptions and the iconography. This evolution rhythm is found with regard to priesthood. Indeed, if we review the historical piece of evidence regarding the druids, we come to the following conclusions. They reappear at the time of the crisis of the Roman Empire in 70. Some of them prophesied then, after the fire of Capitol, the fall of Rome, and the transfer of the power to the transalpine nations (Tacitus. History, IV, 54).

It is no longer a question of the druids during the 2nd century, but we find them in the 3rd century. They are initially prophecies against Severus Alexander and Maximinus (the letter seeming resulting from the druids of Belenus-Apollo, officiating in the city of Aquilea. At the same time, the Roman emperors themselves send their devotions to the Celtic god-or-demons: Caracalla to the god-or-demon of the springs of Grand or Baden-Baden in Germany. Diocletian and Maximian to the god-or-demon Belenus of Aquilea.

The druids reappear officially in the 4th century. Ausonius quotes, in his Commemoratio professorum Burdigalensium, two famous druids. If the druids emerge again in full light, starting from the 3rd and 4th centuries, it is because they could keep the druidic traditions in the shadow of the great sanctuaries.

By replacing like it or not , the worship of the great heroes,by the worship of the saints, Christianity “moralized“ the paganism, i.e., for want of being able to kill it, it made it disabled. The Celtic paganism thus continued a lessened but obstinate existence, which at the very least enabled it to generate the medieval art, while waiting for the Renaissance. Paganism was a crypto-civilization, which continued its underground evolution in the Western subconscious, while waiting for the hour of its resurgence in broad daylight. A national cultural awareness which will emerge later, magnificently, in the superficially Christian cathedrals, allegedly “Gothic “or “Romanesque “ but first and foremost Celtic.

There existed, as we have just seen it, a continuity of the druidic teaching, which prepared the minds to more philosophical views, at least seemingly, than these of the Graeco-Latin, declining, official polytheism. What was lacking indeed for this one, it is to give an answer about the life after death. Latin mythology is not metaphysics. And if it offers, in the best cases, excellent models of life, because the god-or-demons and the great heroes are not another thing than only “superhuman beings," some ultra-living beings; it has nothing to say on what is no longer the life.

However, death remains, for the men of all the countries and all time; the enigma by definition, alarming for the majority, at the very least irritating, for most courageous ones. To this question of always philosophies and religions are confronted.

Lastly, it is not a Roman society the Visigothic, Burgundian and Frankish invaders will meet. It is a society, of course, having been subject to the Roman influence, but which had had its own evolution, and showing different economic and social characteristics, deeply different, from these of Rome. This continuity of Celtic civilization is also witnessed in Great Britain. With the advent of Clovis, it will occur an inexorable phenomenon, which will give all the military force in the hands of the Germanic elements, all the clerical and administrative power in the hands of the Latin elements, and all the producing power in the hands of the Celtic elements. All these powers will be handed down hereditarily, or according to affinity (what amounts to the same thing) with a remarkable constancy.

The crushing of the Celts by the combined effort of the Germanic and of the Latin ones (Lug being then taken as the representative even of the Celtic race) was also philosophical; in what it showed the refusal of the ethics of Lug and of his behavior by these same Latin and Germanic ones; who were becoming the ones after the others, from Constantine to Charlemagne, the very Christian (and anti Lugian) emperors of the West. What is the whole Roman history? If not the longest known attempt to make authority reigning over all the peoples? What weaves all the thread of the Germanic history, if not the periodic recourse to the furious rush?

Let nobody come to tell us after that, that Lug is “the equivalent “of what Wotan is for the Germanic ones, or of what Zeus is for the Greeks. Jupiter is especially the symbol of authority, Wotan the one of anger (German wuten “to rage“).

From the fall of Alesia until the end of the Middle Ages, the political, administrative and clerical power fell, then remained, in almost totality in the hands of the descendants of the Romans and of the Germanic ones from a conquering export. That it is obviously necessary to distinguish from the populations remained in their place. Of course, those of the Celts who resembled psychologically these Romans or these Germanic ones, united with them.

My reader will understand that in the final analysis through “Roman “ “Germanic “ or “Celt “ I designate here psychological types, which can be found, therefore are found indeed, everywhere but which owe their name so that they appear in stronger proportion in such or such historical ethnos group.

Peter Lance, for whom this heterogeneity of the population, i.e., this coexistence on the same land of various peoples still not mixed, persisted until the Renaissance.

“Little by little Celts built the prosperity of a country which, after having been most industrial of “barbarian “Europe, was richest of the Roman Empire, the most brilliant in the Europe from the 16th to the 18th century. Lastly, the middle-class made a success of the communal revolution, which gave it back the largest part of the local political power, and made it able to get ready to take again the national political power “.

This visceral heterogeneity of the population, and this slow reconquest of the power by the Celts, continued even until in the French Revolution in a way. At least still according to Peter Lance.

Besides, we find out of our borders unexpected confirmations of this characteristic of the Revolution, through the privileged influences it had in Ireland and in Wales, where national affinities played a large part.

But, Peter Lance notes, the Romanization of History had psychological consequences the importance of which should not be underestimated. Celts remained Celts, but everything was done to persuade them that they had become Romans, and the drama is that the majority believed it. However if our people was better aware of his past, it would understand why the current society cannot satisfy it, because it remains in all its structures, its ideologies, its very oppositions, Roman and Germanic. It would understand that all the mistakes of the modern West are due to the ignorance of the ethics of the Celts, true founders of Europe.

Our current civilization dating back to the 16th or the 18th century, it rose therefore risen very recently Peter Lance continues: “Taking up at once with the most beautiful life forces of Antiquity again, our civilization therefore is very far from being fully grown. It is on the contrary in its earliest youth. The lucid men who endeavor to judge it; therefore who see in it weaknesses, or some symptoms of decline, should not put them down to senility. But the question they must ask to them, and which is serious, is this one: are these weaknesses inherent to the youth of a being still insufficiently formed, or are they signs of degeneration, even hereditary defects? To answer this question, then to act consequently, is the only means of solving the “civilization crisis “. The awareness woke up slowly during the 16th and 17th centuries to reach in the 18th century the first stage of its maturation with the success of the encyclopedists. It was then the French Revolution, of which the promoters hoped to restore - consciously or not – the individualism, the federalism and the elective monarchy of the old Celtic civilization. But the heredity of the nations, like that of the individuals, bears in its complexity all the traces of what was. There is no blank slate, there is no total birth. The new being, perhaps, endeavors to better choose its ways, but it would not know to be purified at once from all the mistakes of the past.

The Revolution was perverted, corrupted, and the new European civilization fell down in a ridiculous caricature. The nationalism - taken in the strict senses of the word, and not in the sense of imperialism that people tend to suppose to it in order to discredit it - is not another thing than the exaltation of the

ethnic personality (what makes it anti-imperialist in its essence). It can only contribute to the blossoming of the individual personality.

All that was corrupted, particularly under the solvent action of foolish colonialists adventures in which the European peoples were led by imperialist minorities. The war of 14-18 was the result of this decline, at the same time as the signal of the rush towards the collectivism of extreme right or extreme left wing, of which Germanica was the common cradle. During all this period which goes from 1930 to 1960, we saw the nation at the same time as the person, crumble, the first one being diluted in monstrous totalitarian and cosmopolitan blocks, the second one in the leveling of robotized crowds. The society in which we live is a mixture of historical consequences of which all we take on the weight. My purpose is to show that the people of this country lives in an unsuited social structure, that it did not build itself; and that, for this reason, it cannot take full advantage from its potentialities. That of what everyone suffers, starting with the descendants of those who prevent it.

The harmony of a society requires for various ethnic or psychobiological temperaments, on the condition that they are there in balanced proportions. However this imbalance rises not only from the ethnological modifications made by the conquests, and which are generally tiny, but more especially from the inadequate political organization, founded by these same conquests and which concentrates and favors the influence of such or such group. It is not therefore enough to compare national equations to calculate the relative weight of such or such tendency; but it is still necessary to take into account the socio-political structure which increases or decreases, in considerable proportions, the real importance of such or such category.

The blood-cell count of the Western European nations differ rather little between them in absolute figures, but these differences can be accentuated by the diversity of the structures. A nation with centralist system multiplies by two, by five or ten, the influence of the administrative and bureaucratic vocations; a nation with a federal system brings this influence into natural proportions, which become beneficial then. Let us take some examples: between 1936 and 1970, the Germans did not change or so little, ethnically speaking. But the Nazi centralist system could only multiply by ten the social weight of the Germans with bureaucratic and militarist vocation, whereas the current federal system brought this weight onto the level of a correct capacity of organization. The exceptional absolute power of the Soviet bureaucracy multiplied by twenty or by thirty the real influence of the men who constituted it, that thus explains the rigidity of the yoke which then fell on the Russian people. In fact, to assess the actual weight of the psycho-ethnological influences, this should well be understood. France is a country with Celtic preponderance which has 20% of Germanic ones and Germany is a country with a Germanic preponderance which has approximately 30% of Celts. If it is admitted that the centralizing Jacobinism multiplies by 5 the influence of the Germanic “style “ and that the federalism also multiplies by 5 the influence of the Celtic “style “; we have to conclude from it that current France is administratively much more Germanic than Germany, and conversely, than the latter is administratively more Celtic than France. That explains the appearance of inconsistency of my words, to which I take it down nevertheless without saying, that is Celts are congenitally better adapted to the federalism than Germanic ones. They are Germanic monarchies, heiresses of Rome, which created the centralism, they are the French-German wars which perpetuated it. Can we imagine the type of society these men would have produced? Let us try.

On the political level, a constitutional monarchy to which the last Capetian should have adapted himself, but which would not have caused the European coalition against France. It is probable that we would have passed little by little, either to a democracy of the British type, or more probably to a royal election of Celtic type, leading to the presidential regime in fact. On the religious level, the separation of the Church and of the State, and the rejection of the Catholic stranglehold on the mind of the child; followed by a formidable development of atheism and free thought; would have left to Christianity only a derisory influence on the most backward part of the population. The rise of the reflection and of the philosophical research would have made France, and in the final analysis all Europe; able to be equipped with an ethical code adjusted to the scientific and technical evolution in progress, as much as to the Man-even; and would have preserved her of this dramatic divorce of nature which was her lot. The Celtic naturalism would have been allowed to take its course, and ecologism would have developed, hand in hand with the Industrial Revolution, avoiding the abuses we knew. But, I believe that these assumptions are, to tell the truth, still too timid, and that we have difficulty to exercise our judgment about the intellectual and moral revolution which would have occurred. Even the most non-believers among us imagine with difficulty how the re-establishment of Monotheism, after 1793, and of Catholicism after 18 Brumaire in the year 8 (November 9, 1799), unbalanced modern civilization. A philosophical awareness of very high level, a clear comprehension of the place of Mankind within nature and cosmos, of its close relationship with the mineral, vegetable, animal, oceanic, telluric and astral environment; such as former Celts had approached them; but strengthened even refined by the

scientific discoveries of the time; had given an authentic spirituality, pertaining to the Bitos or Universe. Instead of that we had always only a Jehovah supposed to have envisaged everything, and directing our badly ensured steps to his liking; together with a delirious metaphysics, making Man a being created straightforward, and completely out of the biological evolution. Anything else finally that a shortsighted materialism, seeing only objects in the world, and spirit nowhere elsewhere than in the monopoly of the heavenly despot or his hellish know-how. An education for “making man feral “. So is it in a dramatic inadequacy with reality that the Westerner was going to upset the planet and to multiply the disasters. The Christian of before 1789 is a blind man on a mule, but the Christian after 1789 is a blind man on a motorbike.

And let it not be said to us, above all, that all that would have come too early, and that the country was not ready for such a change. Not only was it, but it bore in it, since Alesia, the nostalgia of this Renaissance; and, moreover, it had for it, like all Europe, an urgent need. Because it is for the reason the moral revolution did not follow the industrial and scientific revolution, that our mentalities are behind today, dramatically, our technical powers. And that we are not able to control material and human energies we implement.

Our modern civilization is not more rational (and is perhaps less) that these of Antiquity. Moreover; if it were, it would not show us the disorders and excesses of which we are witnesses and victims: pollution, wasting, revolutions, atomic terror, etc. that a true rationality would never have let becoming more important . Its god-or-demons and its goddess-or-demonesses, even its fairies, are named Science, Technique, State, Liberalism, and, taken in their absolute meaning, they are as bringing illusions as the god-or-demons formerly. Or rather they are more, precisely because we do not take them for god-or-demons, but for perfectly realistic designs (typically Roman deviation. Editor’s note). However we saw that the god-or-demons of formerly were in fact much less abstract than ours, but gave such a beautiful free rein to anthropomorphism only because they were only idealized simple transpositions of human psychism.

Alesia has to be must be canceled. Because the Celt is still there, but he wears a straitjacket which makes him a foreigner in his own country. And this straitjacket, the whole wears it. Because disharmonies of the French society and the jolts which result from them, had an effect on the whole of the West since 1789. And I am as for me completely persuaded that “the crisis of civilization “ which makes the modern world tremble on its base will not find a solution as long as we do not have erased Alesia. As long as we do not have taken care “to give back to Caesar “all what is Caesar's.

This book is not that of a man turned towards the past, but that of a man who seeks the ways of the future, auscultates the present and worries about the scars, the previous history, the heredities. As any good doctor must do it. I challenge whoever to improve anything in life, if he does not make the effort to go back to the most remote causes, to the source even of the evils. The defeat of Alesia is an allegory which restores the image of all the Celtic defeats, as well military as ideological, until 1940 inclusively. But which, more still, symbolizes all the defeats of the Celt of always, in front of a “civilization of artifice “ and a “religion of the system “ which, for more than twenty centuries, have betrayed any species of nature and reality.

It is the defeat of the regionalist in front of the centralism, of the pantheist in front of the monotheism, of the Westerner in front of the Orientalism, of the villager in front of the town planning, of the craftsman in front of the robotization, of the creative in front of the technocrat, of the individual house in front of the big center. And what do I still know? In short, it is the defeat of the free man in front of all the forms of tyranny: political, economic, spiritual. In a word, it is the defeat of the Spirit! This defeat is that of all the men.

And this is why it requires the revenge without which we could despair of the future of Mankind. Beneath the walls of Alesia, it is a certain design of life which suddenly sank. Western civilization is doomed to confusion, distress, and anxiety, soon to panic and collapse if it cannot find back its ethics.

And I want to invite all my readers to the new Renaissance. Because time had come to rewrite History. Western civilization is at its dawn. It cannot be declining because of senility; it can be so only because of disease. It can therefore, it has therefore, to recover.

It is enough for that it seeks in its past, in the history of the dead civilizations which gave birth to it, the signs of health as well as the signs of weakness, which will enable it to establish its diagnosis and to find again the vigor of its genius.

According to Peter Lance therefore, it is perfectly clear, the solution to the worldwide crisis which bastardizes the world can come only from the descendants of the Celts, these paralyzed giants whose pagan art was indisputably rich of original, but having failed, possibilities.

“The structures of our country are from foreign sources and are unsuited to the deep temperament of our people. From there its hesitating approach which always ends up disappointing those who would like to love it, including its own children. If it happens mediocrity overcomes in the doings of our nation, this one is attributable to the inadequacy of its structures, not to the character of our fellow citizens“.

Peter Lance who adds, “our centralist organization binds the potentialities of our nation. That is all the more dramatic since the descendants of the Celts are most inventive, most creative, most astute, of the Westerners. And that if our people had a structure adapted to his deep temperament, I do not doubt that it is able to amaze the world “.

The upholders of this philosophical Jacobinism are the spiritual heirs to the Roman and Germanic ones, according to our author, who thus continues the thread of his demonstration about them.

“Often passed from white to red, from Christianity to Communism, from the yogi to the commissar, and from the reign of the Lord to the worship of the State; they endeavor to prolong in the body of our new world, if necessary under new names, all the defects and all the excesses of the former one.

[Note of Peter DeLaCrau. The contrary movement exists also more and more now. Revolutionary Socialists who finish in the shoes of defenders of capitalism without the least regulation. There are only idiots who never change their mind it is said. Admittedly! But to think well before promising or opening the mouth is not prohibited either. What has the advantage of requiring only light corrective evolutions thereafter! And especially not some disavowals in order to be fashionable, or to bathe in ambient conformism! True Celtic minded people see themselves in Commius the Atrebatian, in the Belgian Ambiorix, even in the person of St Colman. Men who prefer to exile themselves in a remote Inishbofin, rather than to give up their youth ideals and their values (Sinn Fein !) In short all the opposite of our elites of today: journalists, politicians, priests, pastors, rabbis, etc.! Who are especially characterized by their conformism and their subservience with respect to the powers, of money or another thing (dominant ideology, politicians in power and so on). There are for example more anticommunists today in the 21st century, now that USSR crumbled, that in 1950.

Moreover, it is quite simple, being anticommunist at the time, it was almost to be automatically regarded as being of extreme right wing or fascist (Nazi, etc.). What courage therefore for media to be savagely anticommunist… thirty years after its death or its irremediable decline as an idea! But let us return to our friend Peter Lance].

In spite of them, however, in spite of the bad fevers they maintain in us all, the West continues its potential progress. And, for example, when one of our Western countries destroys the Parliamentary system in favor of the presidential system, it does anything other than only restore the ancient monarchy of elective type to the detriment of “senates “ of sectarian and quarrelsome public figures. It comes back to Vercingetorix, Celtillus, Orgetorix, to the patriarch kings of former Ireland; it comes back to the youth of his forefathers, it comes back to life. Incidentally, who realized that, when the French Republic changed its “War Ministry “ into “Ministry of Defense “ it finally ousted the Latin Mars to give again the primacy to the Celtic Teutatis?

According to historians, Celtic people, for approximately 200 years before our era, have been overcome everywhere. And the fact is they physically gave way to the aggressions, combined then successive, of the Latin and of the Germanic ones. But because they have, at heart, never believed in their defeat; because they still kept deep down within themselves this unwavering confidence in one’s lucky star which is the mark of the strong characters, they remained present and strongly present in the evolution of Western society. And the phenomena of revival or resurgence they were, even are still able to cause; did not finish astonishing the world. This “spirit of the renaissance “is characteristic of the Celtic race and already produced, in modern time, the beautiful legend of King Arthur, whose resurrection is still awaited. Because Arthur did not really die. He was carried in the island of Avalon to be treated by his sister Morgan Le Fay. Beyond his character, it is the light of the hero which was occulted: not only the god himself, not only the notion of divinity, but still the very whole Celtic civilization, which has no longer its place in the current world. It is this civilization which will come back one day on the surface of the Earth; it is this civilization which, concealed deliberately by the last druids, awaits only for a favorable occasion to invade the western world. Here is the lesson of the battle of Camlann. The myth of Arthur merges with the entire Celtic universe.

In short therefore. As we can see it through this short analysis, for Peter Lance, the Celtic people, remained a long time away from History, can only soon burst into the world theater, to promote a true renaissance there; another culture facing the classical “ Judeo-Greco-Latin and Germanic culture “ affected today by senility. Celtic tradition today recuperates the strength of a young and rising culture. But there remain still barriers to be crossed for our people in this spiritual adventure, in this groping and awkward approach as Peter Lance says, “which would be largely facilitated to it if it could from the start join again with druidic ethics. Joining again with former ethics, but based on the means of the modern world, they will raise ancestral individualism to the height of a personalist philosophy, which will make each man his own sovereign. And they will build this society of which motto “All for one and one for all “ will be alone able to preserve the human being from the dangers his own powers gather above his head.

What will be this society?? It is not the place here to say it and it is the subject of another book. But those who will have read the preceding pages attentively, and who will have felt in themselves what I express there, will have already some idea of the future.

Celtic civilization could, through its only example, to wake up the deadened world, Peter Lance thinks therefore. This author was indeed convinced, while writing these few lines, that the quite particular destiny of his country “is to create a new type of man, the “mutant “ of whom the West, since the fall of Alesia, keeps the inconsolable nostalgia “.

This Celtic neopaganism will therefore launch a new era, finally removed from all unhealthy miasmas the (Judeo-Greco-Latin) dying classical civilization still conveys .

The Celtic society of the 1st century before our era, had lost its political youth for a long time. Aristocracy had ruined any hope of democratic monarchy, and the country was going to give in Alesia the ghost of a society having no strength left. Let us not make the mistake of judging our “mother “ on these last moments, let us apply to the Celtica of before Caesar, what Nietzsche so pertinently said of Greece (“philosophy and truth" 5)…

Fate had it that most recent and more degenerated Hellenism were that which was to show the most historical force… The Greeks discovered other possibilities that they covered later. The Celts did the same thing. But let us know how rediscover their first lucky finds (Peter Lance. The defeat of Alesia. January 1972 to January 1977).

1. Celtic individualism, Celtic individualism. Were the Celts so individualistic than that??

2. This remark is true for Islam.

3. The signs of the contrary movement multiply nevertheless for some time, and go in the direction of an increasing standardization. The action (or inaction??) of the most anti-racist defenders of the right to be different, each time reinforces the steamroller which laminates the languages (today Empire language is the Globish), the peoples, and the cultures. Spot the error.

4. Peter Lance notes elsewhere nevertheless this stem can also mean: “what is shining “.

5. Das Philosophenbuch. Unfinished book dealing with philosophy and truth.

6. The neo-druidism of Peter Lance. All the men will be one day some god-men in 100 years or 20.000 years. Ancient druidism. More than one god-man. Ten? Twenty? ?? In fact all the saga heroes like Mariccus or Cuchulainn. Christianity (and Islam?) One god-man : Jesus Christ. Judaism. No god-man. It is even prohibited by the Bible. See the snake and the temptation of Adam and Eve in connection with the tree of knowledge (you will be like gods).

UNIVERSALISM AND PUTTING DOWN ROOTS, IN DRUIDISM.

The only universality is the putting down root . The more we meditate deep down inside ourselves, the more we dig in ourselves, the more we are likely to reach the universal one.

As we have had already the opportunity to say it, it is obvious that the god-or-demons who, by definition, escape from time and dimension, are localizable only under a convention, because they should be reduced to standards accessible to the human understanding. This reflection had to form a large portion of the intellectual activity of druids. It should, however, be underlined that all these “translations “are initially and above all intellectual operations. They are not imposed by the religious authorities and do not modify the worship.

The working of equivalences between deities (elohim, jinns, angels and so on….) implies indeed that we conceive a certain permanence of the divine characteristics beyond the ethnic differences. What changes from one people to another, it is the number of the identified god-or-demons, as well as the linguistic form of their denomination. What possibly passes from one people to the other, on the other hand, it is the capacity to identify a god-or-demon already potentially present. An example of this universality of the druidism.

Lucian of Samosata. Introductory lecture. Heracles 1-7.

“ Our Heracles is known among the Celts of the Continent under the local name of Ogmius; and the appearance he presents in their pictures is truly grotesque. They make him out as old as old can be, the few hairs he has left (he is quite bald in front) are dead white, and his skin is wrinkled and tanned as black as any old salt's. You would take him for some infernal deity, for Charon or Iapetus,—any one rather than Heracles. Such as he is, however, he has all the proper attributes of that god: the lion's-skin hangs over his shoulders, his right hand grasps the club, his left the strung bow, and a quiver is slung at his side; nothing is wanting to the Heraclean equipment.

Now I thought at first that this was just a cut at the Greek gods; that in taking these liberties with the personal appearance of Heracles, the Celts were merely exacting pictorial vengeance for his invasion of their territory; for in his search after the herds of Geryones he had overrun and plundered most of the peoples of the West. However, I have yet to mention the most remarkable feature in the portrait. This ancient Heracles drags after him a vast crowd of men, all of whom are fastened by the ears with thin chains composed of gold and amber, looking more like beautiful necklaces than anything else. From this flimsy bondage they make no attempt to escape, though escape must be easy.

There is not the slightest show of resistance: instead of planting their heels in the ground and dragging back, they follow with joyful alacrity, singing their captor's praises the while; and from the eagerness with which they hurry after him to prevent the chains from tightening, one would say that release is the last thing they desire. Nor will I conceal from you what struck me as the most curious circumstance of all. Heracles' right hand is occupied with the club, and his left with the bow, how is he to hold the ends of the chains? The painter solves the difficulty by boring a hole in the tip of the god's tongue, and making that the means of attachment; his head is turned round, and he regards his followers with a smiling countenance.

For a long time I stood staring at this in amazement, I knew not what to make of it, and was beginning to feel somewhat nettled, when I was addressed in admirable Greek by a Celt who stood at my side, and who besides possessing a scholarly acquaintance with their national science, proved to be not unfamiliar with our own. He said me, Noble stranger; I see this fresco puzzles you: let me solve the riddle. We Celts connect eloquence not with Hermes, as you do, but with the mightier Heracles.

Nor need it surprise you to see him represented as an old man. It is the prerogative of eloquence, that it reaches perfection in old age; at least if we may believe your poets, who tell us that…

Youth has a wandering wit

Whereas old age has wiser words to say than youth.

Thus we find that from Nestor's lips honey is distilled; and that the words of the Trojan counselors are compared to the lily, which, if I have not forgotten my Greek, is the name of a flower. Hence, if you will consider the relation that exists between tongue and ear, you will find nothing more natural than the way in which our Heracles, who is eloquence personified, draws men along with their ears tied to his tongue. Nor is any slight intended by the hole bored through that member because I recollect verses in one of your comic poets in which we are told that…

There is a hole in every glib tongue's tip.

Indeed, we refer the achievements of the original Heracles, from first to last, to his wisdom and persuasive eloquence. His shafts, as I take it, are no other than his words: swift, keen-pointed, true-aimed to do deadly execution on the soul. And in conclusion he reminded me of our own phrase: 'winged words.'

The explanation which shows a great subtlety of intelligence was at the very least to come from a good expert in theology. To designate his interlocutor Lucian uses the term philosophos indeed. Philosophos is used in the sentence only as an adjective; but as a substantive it is the word used by Greek writers to generally designate druids. The interpretatio graeca besides had to be made by druids themselves. In the case of Ogmius, all occurs like if a Celtic deity, with a double or triple face, had been the subject of an interpretatio graeca created for whatever purpose it may serve, created, by the druids themselves “…

! --------- -------------- ------------- ------ !

The geography of the Irish myths obviously is enough “mythical “ in the bad sense of the word: localization in the Mediterranean or in Scandinavia, etc.

These geographical liberties express, in words known by everybody at time in Ireland, the infinite of the Next World. And at the same time they follow the fashion of scholars who believed themselves sincerely of Greek or Egyptian origin. What just goes to show that dominant ideology, that's nothing new ; neither the topic of immigration and nor the fashion of the interbreeding either!

As many myths, these stories therefore are at the same time planted but also universal. Or universal and planted if you want.

When the fire devastated Rome (in the reign of Nero), Mariccus before dying in the arena, on his tau-shaped cross , declared that the empire of the earthly things was from now on to pass to the transalpine peoples. “ Rome was formerly taken by Celts, but as the temple of her Jupiter on the Capitol remained intact, miraculously saved by the sacred geese, this empire could still remain some time. The fire which devastated it while purifying it is the sign that the gods gave up this capital and that the empire over the world from now on will pass to the transalpine people “.

These awkward words played into the hands of historians like Tacitus (IV, 54) who understood nothing with the intimate conviction of the druid Mariccus. Of what Mariccus was convinced is quite simply this.

Within the history of men, the Fate or Tokad itself acts and speaks with the mouth of the god-or-demons. It is them who choose their people to entrust to it the mission of being as an oracle or an example (ethical of the knights of the Grail, etc.) in front of the peoples preferring legalism before spirituality, letter before spirit. The choice of particular people, intended to be in first, the relay of this divine message, shows that if this message has universal value, it is not therefore for as much abstract, or purely intellectual. It has to make its way through the middle of the history of the men and of the peoples, in their infinite diversity, in order to join them each one in the characteristic of their temperament, their culture, and their history. In other words, in all what makes their concrete humanity. For more details on this subject to see the parable of the Celtic Hercules in Lucian of Samosata. The very singular history of the Celtic race, its extraordinary destiny, woven of tests throughout more than two millennia, represents in a way that of Mankind in its various situations or experiments. Revolt against the god-or-demons, exodus and nostalgia of the lost paradises in Hyperborea (the islands in the north of the world) , greatness (taking of Rome and of the treasures in Delphi even Crixus and Spartacus) and decline (Alesia). It therefore has a universal value. It is a metaphor of Mankind.

The “matter of [Great] Britain “even found original writers in langue d’oc or in the Provencal dialect. Only two texts were preserved: the romance of Jaufre as “Blandin de Cornouailles “, but from the lost or still hidden rest, survives the name of Kyot/Guyot, that Wolfram von Eschenbach took as a starting point for his “Parzifal “. The influence of the langue d’oc and of the Provencal on French and European poetry (in particular on the Italian School) is well known, less perhaps than that it had on the romantic literature. Chretien de Troyes, his founder, betrays it in many places, in his love dialogs , in his whole dialectics of the “fine amor “. The esotericism, the hermetism, wanted and refined, the “trobar clus “ which culminates with Raimbaut of Orange, another great lord, remind without mistakes of the secret veil with which certain druids covered their works. But are constantly found in the most antiquated Welsh poetry, that of Taliesin, and in the Irish “riddles “. The topics are often close: love of a remote princess, one of the favorite topics of the troubadours as of the Irish poets, generosity of the kings, love of nature. That goes even further, and we are stunned to find purely Celtic concepts, like the sacrifices, the prohibitions (gessa) , and the war chariots in the verses of troubadours, like those of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras:

La ciutatz se vueia

E movon lur carros.

The city is emptied

And they take out their chariots.

One would believe to read an episode of the cattle raid of Cooley, or the feast of Bricriu.

But everything is perhaps only a coincidence due to the imitation of the ancient authors.

There are, however, much humbler books which had surprising international successes. “The fair unknown “ by Renaud de Beaujeu, gives Li Biaus Descouneüs, in the 13th century; the romance of Jaufre becomes in the 16th century, “Tablante de Ricamonte y Jofre “in Spain. The Spanish version translated into Tagalog will end even into Philippines, in 1902.

Ossian made Napoleon crying and inspired a whole part of German poetry. And let us not forget either the various versions of Tristan and Iseult, that of Gottfried, that of Wagner, and the Scandinavian version. As for Perceval, adapted in German by Wolfram von Eschenbach, it was to have a destiny even more glorious, thanks to Richard Wagner.

It is enough to read a romance by Chretien de Troyes to find there some novel period, adventure novel, crime novel, melodrama, lyricism and even a very subtle Map of Tendre. This man of genius knew how to preserve then to hand down an enormous heritage that of our ancestors, we should better know. If the resurrection of the literature in countries where langue d’oc or Provençal dialect is spoken is the glorious revenge of the Gallo-Roman nation on the Frank rustic character, that of the Celtic vein in country of langue d’oil or French language marks the triumph of the former occupants.

Fair revenge, since from this unearthing , European prose will result, since the heroes and the god-or-demons of the Celts, will enter, thanks to it, the national heritage of their Germanic-Saxon winners.

Note found by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau at this place.

But the Celtic History is not reduced for as much to being a digest of the history of the whole mankind.

It is announcement and preparation of what, in the long term, really will happen (the grail) , and this history will open in a way to a beyond itself. Indeed, between the end of the last battle of the Plain of the menhirs or the mounds , and the erdathe, will develop, as we already saw it as we will see it again, the time of druidism.

Former druidism is a witness of the experiment the Celts were the first ones to do , of the various bridges or fords which lead to the next world. Life, death, and ascension in the heaven of Hesus, the effusion of the light of the great heroes (Gaelic Luan laith, avestan xvarnah, bellissamos bellissama in Old Celtic).

History found a new starting with the appearance of the Celtic people and its exclusion from the civilized nations as barbarians or people of louts later (indeed it was a different civilization). As of this moment, the Celts became admodum dedita religionibus: a holy nation, a nation of shamans, in other words, of mystics, who speak the same language as the gods (who are homophonon, in Greek language). This divine choice was confirmed in the person of Ambicatus the Ashoka of the far west whose name means “who fights on both sides “(as well on the spiritual level as on the temporal level).

Among ancient Celts, there was a real balance between the temporal power (the king) and the spiritual authority (the druid) which never encroached (like today) daily on the field of the policy or of the social life; but remained in the field of the individual or private spirituality, in the best case familial, except in rare or exceptional occasions (the great annual festival of Samon, or in the event of serious political crisis threatening the life of the nation: wars, etc.).

The kingly power balances the human society through the taxes or the tributes (boroma) from the atectoi (dhimmis) which go up towards it and the largesses it dispenses in compensation on his subjects. He provides justice, protects the weak ones, sentences the usurpers, and rewards the good people. The bad king is the one who grants no gift , does not deal with the prosperity of the country, increases the taxes.

These ethical principles for the kings and their barons (their deontology) are besides constantly reminded through all the means, including by the satires of the veledae which denounce the faults of the kings and of the powers that be unceasingly; injustice being compared with lies and ignorance (case for example of the mythical Bres/Bregsos).

The satire is not a gratuitous calumny or, as at our time - what amounts to the same thing - a special poetic or literary genre. It is only the observation of a truth, the search for a justice. And, for this reason, it does not have nor cannot be recited or sung without the double presence of the one who made and of the one to whom it is addressed.

What was not always the case of the Jewish prophets speaking to their king through public opinion (lack of courage?)

These successive divine contracts or pacts are not canceled, but show rather the solidarity linking inextricably the Divine one and the Man, an alliance still emphasized at the time of the calling of Ogmius by Keltine.

In the collective memory of the Celts indeed some still older memories survived that their own experience colored, of course, all marked by this spirit of peace with the god-or-demons precisely : the pact between Ogmius and Keltos for example, whose posterity was to be as numerous as blades of grass in the meadow under the shoes of horses or as snowflakes.

But the archetypal chosen person was the hesus Cuchulainn, the last grandson of the Father-Fate, the last avatar sent on Earth. By him, with him and in him, his dagolitoi (believers) will perpetuate the hyperborean or holy nation, admodum dedita religionibus, the people who devote themselves entirely to the god-or-demons. A true priesthood. Royal !

True Celtic hearted or Celtic minded people have the heavy responsibility of being, on the fringe of the atheistic or monolatrous nations (it is so simple, is it not ?) the witnesses of another world. But this next world does not belong to them.

Celtic minded people do not cease commemorating the peace they made with the gods or demons (but these flashbacks project them ahead also).

If the Celtic people of these myths are, of course, somewhere some metaphors of Mankind, the history of this non-aggression pact with the god-or-demons, told by the Celtic Tradition, is, of course, also, to a great extent, that of its failures. It is a history dramatic in many points. There too the iron law of the Fate or Tokad worked! From the Aedui to Vortigern, the physical almost disappearance of certain Celtic people is explained by the weight of the faults of their elites, or more exactly of their social hierarchies, blinded by their selfishness, their autism, their conformism, their servility, their obsequiousness, as their lure of profit.

As regards France in this century and with regard to her elites (politicians, media people, intellectual, etc.) as regards their intelligence, their general knowledge, or their morals, we can venture the following satire. These claimed, so-called, or pseudo-elites, show no fundamental political, social, or philosophical, reflection, nor long-term view. As regards the character, the five words which characterize them are especially: the lie (by omission or euphemism), lack of intellectual integrity, lack of frankness, cowardice, servility (towards the men of authority). Including a rock solid hubris.

They think only of their personal interest and seldom of the general interest or of poorest people. Or then, if they do it, it is with the confusing naivety of the simpleton who each time gets a rigorously opposite result with that he claims to seek. So many saints and so little result! Ultimately, it is to better to regard them rather as cynical women or men, lying as born liars , whose lie is a second nature. What characterizes the French intellectual of today, it is this surprising eye disease which makes that you are able to crush a fly three leagues away , but that you don’t see the cow or the elephant which is in front of them. It is impossible to see the forest for the trees, especially in the eyes of our elites (media journalists, priests, pastors, rabbis, official philosophers, politicians)… end of the note by Peter DeLaCrau.

A good name is above wealth, or better. Druids and particularly veledae, thanks to the more or less cruel satires they will cast against the kings, will maintain intact the ethics and the spirituality of the god-man-god that some people off course, will call diabolical or satanist. Let us note nevertheless, in

the case of abusive satires, that the guilty druids were then punished by the Fate (Tokad). Case for example of Athirne Ailgesach in Ulster. He will end up being killed with his whole family in the fire of their house).

This non-aggression pact with the god-or-demons: to the god-or-demons the underground or heavenly next world (the sedo-dumnon) to men the land of the middle (the dumnon or mediomagos) will be sealed by the avatar on earth of the last of the sons of Lug, Setanta, the so much expected great hesus (Irish Morfessa). Confirmed by his ascension in the heaven on a fairylike chariot (see the story of the siaburcharpat Conculaind). In spite of the intrusion of St Patrick in this typically Celtic myth (the ascension into the heaven on their chariot, of the soul/mind of the great dead heroes). This part of the history of the Celtic people is besides the common inheritance of much of European people. See the cauldron found at Gundestrup in the Denmark.

The truth contained in this former druidism is in nothing decreased by the achievement of this history in the new druidism which reveals today the sense of it. Former and new druidism, in their distinction, just like in their unity, constitute the druidism in a way eternal.

Celtic civilization is the history of the blossoming and of the super-hominization, we have said. But it is expressed in variously historical texts, in either mythological or poetic texts, or even in other literary genres. Each text, each account, is to be read from the point of view it was written.

As said it himself the scholar who transcribed for us the account of the Tain Bo Cualnge, Senchan Torpeist: “Bendacht ar cech óen mebraigfes go hindraic taín amlaidseo & na tuillfe cruth aile furri “. “ A blessing be upon all such as shall faithfully keep the Táin in memory as it stands here and shall not add any other form to it “.

But I, however, who have copied this history, or more truly legend, Senchan Torpeist adds, I give no credence to various elements. For some things herein are for the delectation of fools, sundry others poetic allegories.

The Fate or Tocad, through the god-or-demons, does not cease speaking to men. The Fate and its sons have therefore spoken the Celtic language for at least 4000 years. The myth keeps, of course, the trace of the hand-over process of the new teaching, but the knowledge itself goes back to immemorial time. And it is foolish to want, like the Jews and the Christians or the Muslims, to assign an exact date to it.

What is important it is the message and not the man who recognizes it and transmits it, to those which come after him. Isma doctrine doesn’t exist in druidism.

Tradition, of course, preserved to us the names of the poets having recorded these accounts, but the druids of today see there also eternal truths, without beginning nor end, the poets did nothing but hand down by transcription of the oral data.

N.B.The ritual sentences are instruments of the thought or of the meditation, but they also have a proper creative power, because of their possibility (inspiration, trigger, spiritual enrichment). The sacred word always has immediate effects, either it is a sacrificial word or a sentence having for purpose to calm the bad forces (or to reinforce the positive forces).

This is why, for example, the hundreds of lines of verse of the Tain Bo Cuailnge, most important and longest saga of the Ulster’s cycle, were preserved, while at the same time people knew hardly what to do with its contents. Senchan Torpeist in 647 handed down to us with an incredible precision and archaism, syllable by syllable, the peculiar sounds, the accents, the intonations. All had been handed down orally from master to disciple, by word of mouth. Even though at the same time the writing existed for a long time, people entrusted the sacred know-how to it only unwillingly. To know the old Celtic language well, is nevertheless essential to understand the message of the Fate or Tokad and to seek the truth (therefore to succeed in one’s salvation). As Camille Jullian said it rather precisely: “What was, it is, I repeat it, that half of Europe, at least, between 400 and 150 before our era, spoke Celtic language. The Celtic language is attached narrowly to the oldest form of the linguistic unity of Europe. To know the Celtic language, it is therefore to approach more the knowledge of the European origins, the solution of this problem which is most enthralling perhaps of the history of Mankind. If there were reason for that, I would show that this idea, that this assumption, against which perhaps certain linguists would raise objections, finds its confirmation, not only in linguistic facts, but in archeological facts of all kinds. Institutions, religions, ways of fighting and of ruling.

I see indeed at every moment in the Celtic world before our era, remains which remind oldest Italy to me, and some remains which make me think of the primitive Indo-European. I do not say that the Celt is similar with the latter far from it. But between all the men of the past, it is still the one who differs less from the great-grandfather, ancestor and founder of the sovereign souls of Mankind “(Camille Jullian).

The History and the myths referring to the great hesus (Marovesus or Morfessa in Gaelic language) called Setanta Cuchulainn in Ireland, keep alive the figure and the word of this last avatar in whom is revealed the truth of the Universal Including Everything. This is why the true druidic faith is also meditation about the life and death of the great hesus (Morfessa or Marovesus) called Cuchulainn. But these myths are, however, inseparable from other accounts of Celtic civilization. Their contents are lit by the other facts of Celtic civilization. It is, indeed, the whole life and work of the great Hesus Cuchulainn which; according to circumstances and from the various points of view; show the achievement of the promises of a super-hominization; contained in the god-or-demons of the former druidism, and reminded in the person of the master (of the hesus).

We can even also say that it is the whole history of the Celtic civilization which, studied in its totality by the neo-druidic exegesis , can become Life and Truth, alive words of the god-or-demons, in spite of their concealment ; always changing the minds and opening them to the divine light symbolized by the luan laith (Avestan xvarnah, Old Celtic bellissama bellissamos) . The whole Celtic civilization is luminous power of the Grail for the blossoming of any man, become aware of its existence. But the study of Celtic civilization is not only carrying ideas or speech. It was the witness of events (the exodus of the god-or-demons out of Hyperborea, the exile of the god-or-demons in the Next World, more precisely even in the Sedodumnon, etc.).

It is this peace (Jahiliyya or secularism ) with the god-or-demons the new druids have the responsibility to remind, with the suscetla, the good news which results from this, to all the peoples in the world nations, until the end of this cycle: hell does not exist!

The volume of evil a man can do being limited, his damnation (as a bacuceus forced to be reincarnated because of his too big weight of bran) can be only limited and not eternal. As a bacuceus or a seibaros (Irish siabair/siabhradh) escaped from the ices of the before heaven, the andumnon or anwn illustrated by the imagery of the kingdom of Tethra or Donn(Donnotegia).

From the daily and concrete life even, of the historical druids, we can draw a crowd of things. It is the keystone of the neo-druidism. This experiment and this druidic practice left multiple traces in the History. In the whole of these expressions, discernment is, of course, to be done. Thus is it advisable to distinguish the tradition which comes from the very first druids of the later traditions which multiplied during times and in particular starting from the Middle Ages (cf. the heresy of the Welsh trickery by Iolo Morganwg).

To the discernment the constant recourse to the authentic facts of Celtic civilization contributes. Primordial tradition comes less to add to these anecdotes some truths which would be in no way contained there, that to replace these facts in their context.

To maintain that the Being alone is sacred, it is to maintain that it is beyond everything. It is therefore to say the impossibility for Men of locking up it into the ideas they forge to themselves about it (what the Judeo-Islamic-Christians, however, always try to do, with their very anthropomorphic designs of the higher being).

The higher Being, nobody saw it, no word expresses it, it exceeds any intelligence. The toughest mystery continues to wrap it like a mist although it makes itself known by the men.

The former Celts had such a great idea of the sacrosanct nature of the higher Being that they even avoided naming it.

“ The Celtiberians and their neighbors on the north offer sacrifices to a nameless god … “(Strabo, Geographia III, 4,16). A little like in the case of the El Elyon in the Bible.

Although always rebels to every profanation of the “names or attributes “ of the higher being, the current druids accept very well, however, that people may also give it other names, or dedicate to it other worships.

If believers of other names of God or the Demiurge, honor them by different sacrifices, but in all sincerity; then it is the same higher Being they also in reality honor thus by these sacrifices. Although it is not as it is advisable to do it. The higher Being has no rivals in the person of the other “god-or-demons “. The “god-or-demons “ exist only by it, and they hold their powers from it, they are the incomplete and biased manifestations (particular and subjective, personalized in a way) of its Being.

How therefore could it be jealous of them? The notion of jealous God-or-demon is a puerile and dangerous Judeo-Islamic-Christian anthropomorphism (beware of witch-hunts).

The Fate or Tokad is initially the Father of the god-or-demons its sons, or more exactly their ancestor, by way of successive or cascading emanations. Because it is by designating it thus, as the Father of our brothers the god-or-demons, that the neo-druidism says its truth better. What the Hindus call vyuha and the Muslims shirk (to condemn it).

When the druids call upon the Fate or Tokad as Father,in that, of course, they do not refer to the earthly reality of the human paternity. The assertion the Fate is father does not lock up us either in an exclusively male and masculine design of God or of the Demiurge suitable for legitimating a macho system of family or social life. There is even a female expression: the Tocade (humor!) The Fate or Tocade is in reality neutral, neither male nor female, because located beyond all these earthly eventualities.

If the druids speak about the Destiny or Tokade as a Father, it is only to say that it is it which supports us strongly above the nothingness.

The absolute power of this Father Fate expressed by the words dagodevos (Irish dagda), ollater (irish ollatir), virotutis, iovantucaros, toutatis,dunatis, and so on, is not arbitrary domination, but sovereignty to which nothing is impossible.

The absolute power of this iovantucaros virotutis dagodevos ollater, does not come to crush but, quite the reverse, to support the men, to help them (like the gaefa of the Vikings). We can be at the same time sons and adults. The Celts are free men, released from all the monolatries, which enslave the current world, to inherit the divine goods the Fate (Tokad) conceals.

All is allowed to Celts, they must, however, let themselves enslaved by nothing.

Because if everything is allowed to Celts, everything is not appropriate to them.

This freedom is therefore anything else that the licentiousness.

The freedom of the Celt is that of a brother or son of a god-or-demon.

But therefore let us begin with the starting, i.e., with the birth of this nth world.

Druidic philosophy can bring a beginning of the answer to this question with the image of the snake’s egg.

Symbol, of course, very visual, but exactly similar to that of the serpent of Eternity at the origin of each big cosmic era when he spits fire, and called Ananta, in Hindu mythology. Ananta is the snake who bears Vishnu and it is him who makes the Cosmic egg or Brahmanda emerging through churning of the primeval cosmic water (the nothingness or quantum vacuum?)

It is clear that there cannot be major incompatibility between the druidic doctrines and the scientific discoveries on the evolution. What is sure, it is that there was no creation ex nihilo from nothing by a demiurge with rather strange tastes (sadistic love?) as the Judeo-Islamic-Christian religions repeat it still. Moreover, this world was not created once and for all, like if the Fate or the Tokad, after the birth of the world, only had to withdraw from it completely, disappointed.

The Fate or Tokad does not cease in fact to ensure the existence of the worlds which follow one another eternally.

The cyclic view of History among Celts (the notion of long life) show the multiple nature of every birth of a world. The birth of our world is only the link of a long chain, its death will be only the middle (and even a point only) of a long life. The (pro) creating act is renewed at every moment to keep existence of the world. Without this ceaseless action of the Fate (Tokad), everything would fall down in the nothingness.

The Fate or Tokade, as a primary causation of everything which exists, does not remove the secondary causations, these which make it possible to give an account of the sequence of phenomena. The Celtic genesis was reported to us by the Irish book of Conquests (Gaelic Lebar Na Gabala) and some other manuscripts or accounts of ancient authors. Even if many episodes having nothing to do here initially ended up being added there; the Milesian invasions, ancestors of Gaels, because if the Gaels exist well, their true origin has nothing to do with these sons of Mile of Spain; the settlement of Banuta/Cessair…

The purpose of these legendary accounts is not to paint an objective picture of the beginnings and first days of this world. The lesson of these legends is very different. It goes much further, it goes much deeper. It does not say how concretely that occurred. The natural sciences are there for that, to help us to understand the origins and the evolution, the history of the various forms of life or alive species. The legendary accounts of the Book of Conquests say to us, on the other hand, why and for what

(divine) destiny Universe and Mankind are ordered. This genesis is, of course, expressed with the linguistic resources available among Celts in this time. We will not be astonished to find there a crowd of symbols.

Besides it is admitted today that the myths are to be distinguished carefully from the fables. The myths all are carrying human experiments and deep truths: of these which precisely do not let be enclosed in the networks of the simple reason. It is particular the case of all what relates to origins: what it is to be known is founding later knowledge. In a language which is not yet that of science; the legendary accounts of the beginnings of the world or of the Mankind according to the ancient druids open towards a history called for speaking about (roughly) known places (the islands in the north of the World) and about perceptible dates. See the works of some specialists in connection with the partial submersion of Hyperborea, some works which corroborate these by Jurgen Spanuth besides about the Sea Peoples.

In the accounts concerning the birth of this world, certain elements of the universal cosmic laws also called natural laws or order of things appear (Fate among Greeks, Dharma among Indians, etc.)

In the Celtic tradition, it is never a question of primitive androgynous person or of a woman drawn from the coast of the first Man.

As of the first accounts of the Book of Conquests, the Human being is established in his sexual differences of man or woman.

As the Indian chief Seattle would have said it in 1854: “ The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices of the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man : all belong to the same family. All things are connected “ (it is a late summary of various translations of his speech).

If Man rose above the other animals ; i.e., just under the god-or-demons his brothers (since resulting too from the great wizard Nemet Hornunnos); and if he is called, in a sense, for being now “the god-or-demon ruling over the earth “ for them (since the exile in the Next World of the children of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Danu (bia); it is to lead them with him to their end.

It is not to crush them. The world was given up to him by the god-or-demons his brothers, to be farmed by him like a clearing in the forest.

It is besides this destiny, this completely particular status, of Mankind, that the druidic doctrine of the anamone (of the soul) tries to understand. The anamone of each and every one is in reality only participation in the gigantic universal soul which is the auentia or awenyddia. For former druids, the anamone of Man, although tear of fire resulting from the awenyddio, was nevertheless also in an unaided way, an integral part of human body. What amounts saying, in a language which is no longer ours, that the soul/mind, compared to the body, is a little like the thought compared to the words which express it. Body and soul, but really one, Man is, under his body condition even, as a summary of the universe or bitos. “Divinis humana componere licet “ Ausonius wrote (in his eclogue devoted to the word libra).

Man often experiments , to various levels, unexpected or unhoped-for successes.

He also experiences situations he knows to be risky, even if, at the time, they do not pose a problem to him.

Mankind also often experiences, in varying degree, situations or events (such disease, such death, such reverse of fortune…) from which the sense seems to escape to him radically.

Behind these experiments of the negative forces, some people just see the hand of God [or Devil] jealous and almighty , of a Sabaoth god [or devil], punishing the bad guys and rewarding the good persons. Others speak about chance or bad luck (gaefa the Vikings say). Others still, as of all times, think of finding in the stars the key of this happy or unhappy fate. In reality all this is explained by the destiny of Mankind in this world and very seldom (ten cases in a generation) by a former life.

The Celtic tradition, to express this reality uses the image of the apple (aballo), fruit of the knowledge of true life.

At Fir Bolg or Gallioin; but the Fir Bolg or Gallioin Gauls of the Book of Conquests are only a metaphor of Mankind; the apple tree (Aballos) was a tree of the Next World making men… some brothers of the god-or-demons. The ram-headed snake, in these legends, represents the underground and fertilizing power of the fire in water, of the soul in matter. The first “Man “ having eaten this fruit of the

knowledge of true life, in Hyperborea, was our spiritual ancestor to everybody, the nemet Hornunnos, since he was the first wizard or shaman. The future men having thus tasted the fruit of the knowledge of the true life, to their purely animal sufferings (because Man is also an animal) , they added another pain, purely human this time, the metaphysical suffering. It is therefore, alas, also with the nemet Hornunnos, the great shaman, that the nostalgia of the lost paradise entered this world, and with this nostalgia suffering and anguish, forgery and lie. While making taste to everybody this apple of the next world, the great wizard Hornunnos has perverted our primitive animal innocence, the harmony with the world and therefore with ourselves. Thus the animal became man.

This metaphysical suffering is the sign of a broken world, fractured, since the end of Hyperborea, in short the sign of our humanity.

By eating this apple, the first Hominids in Hyperborea became aware of their separation from the divine one.

In the Lebor na Gabala Erenn, this Mankind will be lastly evoked by metaphor under the Gallic ethnic names become in Irish language : Fir Bolg, Gallioin, Fir Domnain. Even if they evoke the historical names of Volcai, Galloi or Dumnonioi (Volques, Gauls, or Dumnonians), we are in full meta-history, and it is besides this metaphorical conversion, which explains the rather obvious chronological inversions of the Irish account.

The image of the Fate in its god-or-demons; scrambled in Man by this original weakness (see the well-known nine days fever of the Ulaid) and by this exile ; will be summed up in its totality by the life and the work of the one who is, by nature, the perfect image of the superhuman destiny: the hesus Setanta, named Cuchulainn by the Irishmen. It is on this image that the men have to take a model by the gift of oneself, which like any suffering has a redeeming value. The grandson of the Fate last-born son of Lug will become thus the elder one of a multitude of new brothers.

The “end of Hyperborea “ can die…. hard . The history of the Celts does not cease to exalt the greatness of Mankind, this greatness of the Man who saw designed and made the god-or-demons in his image and resemblance, and who is therefore, thereby, called for the deification.

As this awareness of the Man coincides with his arrival in History Teilhard de Chardin could have said, the beginnings of his blossoming will be therefore by no means to be sought outside History, but rather within it.

This lesson remains more than ever topical in a time subjected to the deceptive seductions of all kinds of esotericism or pseudo-druidic occultism. See for example the intellectual swindles of the Druidic College of Gauls, formerly directed by Mr. Paul Bouchet then by Mrs. Huguette Cochinal; the incredible half-Celtic,half-Germanic, hodgepodge, of the druidic group of Gauls directed in 1993 by Mr. Pierre Petitjean and Mrs. Renee Camou. The decline and the headlong rush with lightening speed of the druidic Church of Gauls, reduced to the state of simple druidic brotherhood since the somewhat forced resignation, of its Primate, in 1993, etc.).

The druidic allegory of the original weakness (once again see the famous nine days fever of the Ulaid) is not that of any “original sin “ having to make the whole posterity of a hypothetical first human couple feeling guilty.

The Gaelic heresy in Ireland (and by heresy, we want only to say a little too thorough deviation compared to the broad outlines of ancient druidism) symbolized this weakness as an evil:

- affecting only the Ultonian men (ultonian means “lord “);

- during a limited length (four days and five nights);

- but always when the crunch comes, alas! (Fortunately, there is Cuchulainn, because he is not Ultonian, himself!)

Where the weakness multiplied ad infinitum, the divine sovereignty of the Fate compensated for it by sending the hesus Cuchulainn. From where his initiation, hung in a tree (a topic taken over by the mabinogi of Math, son of Mathonwy, in connection with Lleu Llaw Gyffes; and by the Eddas too. See the sufferings of Odin being sacrificed to himself).

We are in a way preceded as by a shade by this weakness of the flesh (the legend of the nine days’ fever of the Ulaid is very clear on this subject); solely because of our membership of the animal specie, symbolized in its origin by our national Toutadis Pater , the high primordial Shaman Hornunnos.

N.B.Regarding the famous Dispater of Caesar (Suqellus among Celts)… it is there, not the fatherhood of the Man but the fatherhood OF THE PHYSICAL BODIES.

The fact that, for Caesar, this god-or-demon is combined, not with the spiritual richness, but with the material richness……proves it.

Editor’s note . The three previous sentences are crossed out in the original manuscript on loose sheets.

Every man (since the Gallic Fir Bolg or Gallioin of the myth are only a metaphor of Mankind ) who comes into the world, inherits a divided personality at the same time.

Let us note nevertheless that the male chauvinism of the time dit the women were excluded from the scope of this “curse” because regarded as actors of no importance of the social life.

N.B. The child is not a sinner personally. But because of his membership of mankind, he is marked by this initial weakness (even if there are exceptions, see the complete text of the legend of the nine days’ fever of Ulaid). The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

It is by following the walking one that we find the way: the example of our great hesus Cuchulainn (mentioned under the name of Morvesus or Morfessa in the Irish book of conquests).

By following his path, the druidicist is inserted into the divine sovereignty, in this new life made possible by the pact with the god-or-demons, and by the example of the hesus Cuchulainn. The blossoming of the soul is thus offered to everybody. The druidic allegory of the initial weakness is an invitation to tear oneself away from this original weakness, to be no longer entirely under its law. Without, however, necessarily falling into the typically Christian fault consisting in always taking pleasure in an unhealthy sense of guilt. Because it is an attitude which locks up the man on himself and which is truly seed of cadaveric rotting in the strict sense of the word (is it not besides the precise meaning of the Christian notion of mort-ification?)

In former druidism, it is generally up to the veledae that revealing these weaknesses contrary to any aristocratic deontology, fell. Here, according to the account of the battle of the plain of the mounds, on what occasion the first satire denouncing the lack of generosity of one of the men in the high places of the time was recited (everybody is not Ariamnes or Luernius!

“ A poet came to the house of Bregsos/Bres seeking hospitality. He entered a narrow, black, dark little house and there was neither fire nor furniture nor bedding in it. Three small cakes were brought to him on a little dish and they were dry. The next day he arose, and he was not thankful. As he went across the yard, he said : without food quickly on a dish, without cow's milk on which a calf grows, without a man's habitation after darkness remains, without paying a company of storytellers : let that be Bres's condition. Bres's prosperity no longer exists.”

To say and make the truth occurring in the service of the generosity, such are indeed most beautiful works of the mind.

But the mind can be perverted by the initial weakness staged by the legend of the nine days’ fever of the Ulaid and lead to lie (a lie very different from the simple mistake, because perversion of the truth), violence, and so on.

The true Druidicist should not resort to practices of the magic type, like baptism or sign of the cross to escape all this, but the druidic knowledge, however, enables us to keep our spirits up in spite such weaknesses.

The druidic doctrines show us well that the evil is a direct effect and so to speak mechanical of the personal or collective errors sometimes committed in our past, much more rarely and even exceptionally, in past lives.

Some upholders of Hinduism or of a hard-line monolatry, go as far as saying that the blindness of a born blind person can, for example, be the consequence of very serious faults committed by him in a past life. And that Shoah which the national Socialists in Germany inflicted to the Gypsies in 1942 was perhaps the direct consequence of the sins committed by this people in a past life. Because they were too Aryans speaking an Indo-European language…

More reasonably, druidism teaches us that if these scandals resulting from the action of the fate or Tokad belong to the questions which haunt the mind and the soul of the men; it does not claim necessarily clearing up all the darknesses related to the question of the suffering and of the evil.

What the druidism only claims, it is that the Fate or Tokad gave us three different means, three ways, three bridges, to escape them. The fate wants by no means the misfortune of the men, the Fate is not delighted by the spectacle of the suffering of the living beings, tortured by pain and death. The Celtic fate just like the gaefa of the Vikings, and in spite of the misleading phonetic resemblance with the word gaesa , is positive, it is to be viewed only as a capital of good fortune or chance granted to any human being as of his birth. The man does what he wants of this capital, he can waste it, but watch out then for the poetic justice.

Death, all what separates us from the god-or-demons. This is why the reflection inspired to the primordial druids the three bridges or the three fords which make it possible to escape this fatality.

The druids indeed received from the Tokad the mission and the means of fighting the fatality of the misfortune and of the suffering, so that their apparent victory in this world is reabsorbed. In light of the combat fought by the god-or-demons against this fatality, the druidic knowledge indicates to us the way to escape it. Let us meditate well what the avatar of Taran/Toran/Tuireann, Belenos, called Manannan mac Lir in the Isle of Man, did to protect or regenerate the god-or-demons.

The mythology surrounding the life, the death, and the ascension into the heaven on his glorious chariot, of the great Hesus (Irish Morfessa), new Hornunnos, new primordial Man, priest-king of Thule (Falias in Gaelic language); invites us to believe in a possible victory over suffering, distress, anguish, torment, persecution, hunger, danger.

INDIVIDUAL OPINION OF THE DRUID JEAN-PIERRE MARTIN

IN CONNECTION WITH DRUIDIC MYTHOLOGY.

Here what it is necessary to understand from all the “descents“ of fire in water druidic mythology evokes. It is necessary to grasp the harmonious melting of the two principles attracted by a “love “; which is not yet “erotic “ in the lower levels of our world, since it is not there yet question of men and women; but “attractive “ like the force which invites the atoms to combine between them (gravitation). Hence, in Celtic mythology, and in accordance with the lunisolar calendar the calendar of Coligny is, the fact that the god-or-demons therefore, have almost all a consort, a partner or a wife (a shakti the Hindus say). And go in couples, a little like Ashera and Yahweh in the Bible, for example.

For whom studies druidic Pantheon or Pleroma and mythology, another important thing is also to remember: the god-or-demons of former druidism deal with the Celtic countries, found their towns, speak Celtic, their names are Celtic… A little like Allah with respect to Arabs, Yahweh for Jews, etc.

- Heroes.

In druidic mythology , the god-or-demons may love mortals, they think besides only of that, they exist only for that. Like the Bible says it very well, Genesis 6,1-4: “When men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, the sons of God (the angels) saw the daughters of men that they were fair and they took them wives of all which they chose….There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God (the angels) came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men who were of old, men of renown“.

The platonic or real loves of the god-or-demons and of the mortals, in Celtic mythology, are therefore only pretext for delivering great heroes. The whole Celtic Sedodumnon (Sidh) “is fishing men“ like the fishing king of the novels of the Round Table. Especially while using splendid female messengers or angels, as a lure. The god-or-demons cause the heroes, or even straightforwardly give birth to them, Taran/Toran/Tuireann and Lug at the head (see his role in the birth of the hesus Setanta before he becomes the Hound of Culann - Irish Cuchulainn -).

The whole Sedodumnon (Sidh) helps them, gives them weapons, saves their life.

The Celtic heroes are superior beings of a nature intermediary between the semi-god-or-demons and the men, some “warrior “saints contrary to the “passive “saints of Christianity.

It is strange to note that none of the Celtic heroes is truly of plebeian origin. They are always sons of a god-or-demon or of a goddess-or-demoness, or of a fairy,son of a prince or of a princess, but never simple commoners without a name. What the ancient druids wanted to render comprehensible to us by the means of these not very ordinary genealogies, it is that it always has to be the question of an elite. It is they are always worthy men aspiring to immortality therefore showing themselves worthy to be sons of a god-or-demon, or of a king.

All the heroes have to kill, to extract, to slice, what keeps them captive, and they are their fights embellished with images by the various categories of druids of the time (bards) which are reported to us in some legends of Celtic mythology. Ancient druids hardly dealt with pointless and superfluous comfort, but they had a superhuman purpose, out of proportion to our current concerns, directed towards an easy life, without invigorating fights, or towards a gregarious life for robotized man. The fight is, however, one of the basic forms of the life and first the fight against ourselves, in order to carry us out fully (great jihad).

The fight is generating powerful and beneficial forces, which make it possible the Man to leave his mark in the universe.

The ago or necessity to fight (see the case of the eon called Neto or Neth/Neith) was one of the paradigms of the druidism. The whole Sedodumnon, god-or-demons and goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, united together, will provide the weapons necessary, as we have just seen it, and even the divine protection, to the heroes who will deserve it. But they are above all symbolic or moral weapons, because the furious fights of these heroes are first and foremost inner fights (great jihad).

Let us not ourselves be caught up by the heat of the moment, the odor of sweat and blood, the flow and the backward flow of the boosted armies, the cry of our heroes, the cries of the casualties! See the battles of the mounds plain or of Tailtiu in the Irish manuscripts.

They are not real wars of the past, unlike what some historians affirm, considering the vague historical traditions from which they borrow certain details at times. All that can be compared with the hands of the prestidigitators. One twists and turns in the light while the other deals with the most important thing

. The greatest victories of the heroes are these which are won over themselves (always what is called great jihad in Islamic land).

We can overcome the monsters which live us only with the agreement and the protection of the god-or-demons (for example Lug intervening to save the hesus called Cuchulainn in Ireland). Those who let themselves be caught up by the enchantment of the great expansion period of the Celtic world will be perhaps grieved because of that, but these hard inner battles, without having the panache of these which are reported by historians, are not less frightening. And to overcome oneself is a superhuman task, according to the very small number of men who made a success of the archetypal higher ordeal. But it is well here the true soul/mind of the Celtic people lies according to Henry Chedorge, a soul/mind still full with a sacred enthusiasm, of which (alas!) we have no longer some idea.

Men need “universal fire “and “universal fire “needs Men. The search for the Spirit is for them the search for their true origin. Any well-born soul indeed , aspires only to the return to “universal fire “. In order to bring back with pride a pure big flame to the (fire) Father (aedus) who entrusted to her at the beginning of her earthly pilgrimage, the small tear of divine fire its frail constitution can support. This large flame brought back by Man in exchange of the small tear of fire, here is the purpose of any human life on earth.

The perpetual flame of the oak sanctuary dear to noiba Brigid had this meaning. It pointed out the small tear of divine fire that the men were to pay to the large fire father (aedus) after having transformed it into a flame.

Man, the god-or-demon of the bottom, has to find his soul and bring back it with him to the eternal spring. This is why the higher Being (TO BE COME) requires for the men, since the god-or-demons are in us, closer to us than the end of our nose, so that all its sparks go back to their spring one day.

What wanted to do the ancient druids therefore with these myths and this Panth-eon? Quite simply to accelerate this process of reintegration, too long in their eyes, but by opening a considerable range of recruitment, without limitation of caste nor of rank, for the well-born souls, able to travel this hard way in their life.

In druidic mythology, the god-or-demons are made for the education of the Man, each divine force endeavors to go down lower and lower, always more within the reach of Man, in all the circumstances of the life. In druidic mythology, each god-or-demon, each divine force, holds out to us his helping hand, just at a height so that we can grip it. From where so often met divine epithets: mopatis, virotutis, iovantucarus, anextiomarus.

The Man can consequently hear the labarum (the word of the Fate or Tokad symbolized by the cross of St Andrew in Scotland and by the cross of St Patrick in Ireland) and go back up to its spring without awaiting the end of time (erdathe). The ancient druids, thanks to their high spirituality, their myths and the Panth-eons or Pleromas they integrated; could channel the powerful forces of their youth towards a sublimation of Man; towards a superhuman ideal able to make Man a god-or-demon. This process of blooming occupies a good portion of druidic mythology, this Celtic Bible which starting from a man could make a god-or-demon, and reciprocally. The ancient druids themselves, did not forget it, they knew that Man is a god-or-demon who does not know himself.

What were the means used by them to cure the miseries of Mankind in this time? They were of two kinds.

Firstly, by the action of an immense force of which we know no longer the enormous possibilities… the Faith. But if the faith alone makes it possible to obtain many results, the faith enlightened by Science still gives better ones. This is why the second of these means were the remedies provided by Nature, because merciful god-or-demons (virotutis, anextiomarus mopatis iovantucarus dunatis and so on) could only put within our reach everything that it is necessary for the cure of the body.

That also we forgot it. The patients presented themselves to the sanctuary of the god-or-demon most favorable to their cure, and the first thing the druids asked them, it was to have a purifying bath (followed by a long sleep); which could only introduce the patients into a climate favorable to the communication with the healing god-or-demon.

Now let us tackle the question of adultery (like that of the wife of Partholon) and of the incest (Etanna/Etain) in Celtic mythology.

Druidic mythology can appear in the eyes of many people full with eccentricities, with gratuitous inventions, even with immorality: crimes, adultery, passions and human weaknesses are ascribed to the god-or-demons.

The Christians ascribe well to their living god (Jesus) some fits of anger (against the merchants in the temple: John 2,13-21) or at the sight of a poor leper (Mark 1,40-45). Even a moment of despair in Gethsemane (Matthew 26,36-46).

That is due to the paradox even of the embodiment in the world of the men of a divine force. There are always two natures in the gods, a divine nature and a more or less human nature.

In short, all that would be indeed immoral and revolting if the ancient druids like us had been attached to the letter. But they were neither duped nor prisoners of the fantasies, and knew what to expect about the contents of this sacred oral literature. All that was in reality most of the time symbolic, bus god-or-demons and goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, are not human beings by definition, but cosmic forces, natural forces, or some allegories. Kind Vengeance pursuing Crime. Destroying or constructing forces therefore , forces which “have sexual intercourse“

with a creating aim, or which pushed back themselves and are destroyed with a destroying aim.

The actions of the Celtic god-or-demons in reality were not immoral, quite the contrary. The god-or-demons of the druidism punish iniquity, perjury… and take care themselves of honor and justice by respecting the great laws of the world. The false oaths for example were punished in the life by a kind of poetic justice.

Druidic mythology is also overflowing with revenges, divine or not, of all kinds. Fictional revenges which deceived nobody at the time, because they are not, of course, bodily deaths in this case. What it is necessary to understand, it is that it is simply an obstacle crossed by the hero in question. These stages match only states of awareness. Because there are the states of awareness which are in question, and not the facts.

Some words now on two examples of great druidic myth. That of the hesus called Cuchulainn in Ireland (of his true name Setanta, what means “the walking one and therefore by extension the footpath or the path traced by the one who walks on “); and that of the beginnings of Mankind. Like folk wisdom says it, it is while following the walking one that we find the path.

1). First example of basic myth : the metahistory.

The beginnings, according to the ancient druids, of Mankind. Phase called “Hyperborean “by the Greek authors.

According to the book of Conquests of Ireland (Lebar Na Gabala Erenn), men and god-or-demons appeared on earth in quite a modest way. Could we already truly call them besides men? Or god-or-demons? The Gaelic legend, of course, placed in Ireland these beginnings of Mankind by euhemerizing or by historicizing thus locally the original Pan Celtic myth.

N.B. We will see in connection with Islam that ethnocentrism is a natural selfishness as old as Mankind, integral part of Mankind (see our chapter on Islamocentrism).

With regard to the human beings, they were still at this time animal-men. It will be therefore necessary to await the Nemet Hornunnos (the primordial great wizard and chief of clan called Nemed in Ireland) so that we may finally speak about human, animal childhood giving way as it happens to human adolescence.

The Fate, Tokad, needs, of course, the god-or-demons (the constructing forces which are secondary causations, but it was necessary also for him “to subdue “ them in order to be able to withdraw in himself one day, and to become a “deus otiosus “like it is said in Latin language. From where the part of the men and their contentions with the god-or-demons.

According to the book of Conquests of Ireland still, the god-or-demons themselves appear or are named for the first time as inhabitants of the islands north of the world; which form Hyperborea in a strict sense of the word. The Irish bards, with regard to the god-or-demons, did not dare to delocalize them as regards their origin and they remained, in that, faithful to the metahistorical original pan-Celtic myth , the localization in the Far North.

The “Hyperborean “civilization evoked by the battle of the Plain of the stone pillars or of the mounds, and by the battle fought for the possession of the Talantio (Irish Tailtiu, Rosemartha on the Continent) is the work of semi-divine men; because living - and fighting even - against the god-or-demons.

What is remarkable indeed, in druidic mythology, it is that the men formerly could challenge the god-or-demons themselves.

What means well that we can reach the same level as them. They were similar in fact to these god-or-demons they fought.

At the beginning therefore, Man is also divine, or the god-or-demon is also human. He lives with or against the gods or demons, but his happiness is not unbounded. Came indeed quickly the time of the decline of the divinity of the Man, [in the Irish version of this druidic metahistory it is in fact of a separation in two distinct branches, the Fir Bolg Gauls and the children of the goddess or demoness or fairy, Danu (bia). In other words, between the men and the gods],

the development of his individuality as well as the vexations caused by the rising of his free will (of his moral autonomy).

Except for an allusion to the fruits of the earth rather strangely the first abundance evoked by our texts related to the sea (a people of fishermen?)

A fishful sea!

A fruitful land!

An outburst of fish

Fish under waves,

In streams ….

A rough sea!

birds,

A white hail

With hundreds of salmon,

Of broad whales!

A harbor song—

An outburst of fish,

A fishful sea!

The division of the cultivated earth or Talantio (symbolized by the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Rosemartha on the European continent) in various kingdoms with limited well borders, it is the case to say, the uxonabelcon of Uisnech being precisely a terminal border; it was in fact the beginning of selfishness. The cultivated land or Talantio is therefore divided in fields, the disputes rise, the earth products rarefy, it is the beginning of the struggle for life.

After the battle for the possession of the Talantio/Tailtiu called Rosemartha, the borders will stop no longer being erected, the trick and the spite of the men will tear mankind. Cosmic laws will be ridiculed, forgotten. We should nevertheless not be mistaken in the interpretation of this ancient druidic myth relating to metahistory. Not only did Man not sin or fault in this affair, but on the contrary he did what his destiny forced him to do. The expulsion of the god-or-demons out of the surface of this“Hyperborean “ Talantio was required, because it was necessary to cut this permanent touch with the divine world, so that the men finally take to heart the conquest of the material world. The conquest of the wayward matter, the immeasurable human mistakes, must refine the creative intelligence, form its personality like its consciousness. The spirit has in store thousand and one tricks to awake the inner god-or-demon who dozes in us.

According to the Greeks, who have much written about him, the Man of hyperborean times was still in too permanent and too close touch with the heaven. The mishap happened to their envoys or their messengers left to Delos according to Herodotus (the maidens Hyperokhe and Laodike etc.).

However the conquest of the matter is necessary to the achievement of our cycle.

Including with all that it can comprise dangerous.

The new higher Being in gestation, of course, needs for scientists, but he also needs for “handymen “ with skillful and nimble hands, for “prestidigitators “of the matter.

II) Second example of basic myth.

The hesus Setanta named “Hound of Culann “(Irish Cuchulainn) also called Great Hesus (Gaelic Morfessa) Master of Thule.

It is a kind of Buddha, but ACTIVE, DYNAMIC, AND MALE, whose example has to lead the whole youth. Because the Hound of Culann was a hero, apparently not for himself, but so that his heroism is of benefit to the whole society (see his trifunctional education).

100

In short, the hesus Setanta known as Cuchulainn, according to this myth, therefore had in his time a life completely centered on the virtue and the sense of the sacrifice.

Here in short the become myth history of the greatest of the great heroes of former Celtica. It is the initiation of a man come from above (theios aner) and considered as a model a little in the way of Muhammad . A little dense initiation and a little too advanced in its least details for our modern sensitivity (see the precise details provided by the Irish variant); but the ancient bards had perhaps their reasons to do good measure (their remuneration depended on it, a little as the journalists of today who are paid by the line). More especially as the elite of the Celtica of this time was then accustomed to these religious enigmas thanks to the visits of the various Schools of thought where people have a lively discussion about all this teaching. Because it is indeed a true monument the ancient druids built, while thus speaking about the person of the Hound of Culann (Cuchulainn); not only for Celtic youth as we saw it, but in fact for the greatest advantage of the youth of all times.

It is up to the youth of all the countries to choose indeed, like the great Morfessa master of Thule, this semi-god-or-demon, the heroism and not the sentimentality; to prefer the luminous glory of the summits to the anonymous darkness of the facility. For finally, after having struggled much, suffered much, to have the inexpressible joy to discover in this human carcass they believed weak, the light of the hero (Gaelic luan laith, Avestan xvarnah).

But can the youth of today still understand the lesson of this victory? That is another story.

The hesus embodied in Setanta (Cuchulainn) is not the first ancestor of the Man, although Master of Thule under the name of Morfessa. But it is the promise and the means of rising to the god-or-demons, by climbing the ladder of the sacrificial cauldron. The Hound of Culann (Cuchulainn) is the first man who is again deified. He serves as a hyphen between the heaven and the earth. He was the theios aner, the man who knew at the same time the secrets of the heaven and of the earth, and as theios aner he was able to use the forces of above as those of the bottom. But if the hesus embodied in Setanta/Cuchulainn thus arrived at highest initiation, it is because he had rejected, as of the beginning, pleasure or languidity, and chosen a glorious life, although short, let us not forget it.

With the hesus called Cuchulainn in Ireland, men will have been able therefore, for the first time, to contemplate the man-god-or-demon (Greek theios aner) in his whole luminous splendor, and this vision will leave an indelible trace in the heart of the druids of this time.

The men in the search for the grail are all potential Cuchulainn.

If it were necessary for us to learn a moral from the life of Setanta/Cuchulainn, it would be well this one. A human being, however, weak is he, bodily speaking, is able to successfully perform the same exploits as the Hound of Culann, provided that his soul/mind, his will, his thirst for the infinite,are in tune with these of this master of Thule.

N.B. On the “descent into Hell “of the great Morfessa. Cuchulainn, become the equal one of the sun.

He too will go down, in the lowest part of the life, to bring the suscetla (the good news) to those who doubted this marvelous destiny was possible to Man: the punishments of the Celtic “hell “are never eternal.

They are only anterooms of the paradise. The she or he Tocad leaves there to the exceptionally criminal men (some cases per century perhaps) a chance of paying for (ericfine in Ireland or galanas in Wales) in a new life.

The great Morfessa Cuchulainn will be well therefore, as a Master of Thule, a torch of the Humanity-Divinity, a theios aner, living example of the success and of the hope. He will be from now on for all the druids the archetypal god-or-demon-man, the one who can overcome death.

This infinity race is open since the men have in them the divine spark. But the Man, with his more or less autonomous free will, is, of course, free to believe, follow or reject, this divine model, this luminous example, marking out the ascending way of the human evolution. Rather curiously besides we find the same idea in Islam with the isma surrounding the very person of Muhammad and which also sees in him a perfect example of warlike spirituality. Regis Boyer spoke about the Christ of the Barbarians. Could one, in connection with the theios aner Cuchulainn, speak of a Muhammad of the Celtic barbarians???

101

If we were not limited by the size of this booklet, we could add thousand other examples, and reveal the eternal truth which hides under multiple Harlequin suits, with which ancient druids dressed it.

Books and books would be necessary to comment on or transpose all these Celtic myths in their multiple variants; but, as we saw it, the purpose of this little book is more modest. It will be limited in fact to give to the young schoolboys of druidism, a righter idea of the spiritual enthusiasm of this great people, and of genius of the paganism in this time.

We will in particular try to render comprehensible that at the time of the Great free and independent Celtica (the Celtica Litavia of Ambicatus) the religion of the god-or-demons was an integral part of the daily life (the whole nation is “admodum dedita religionibus “will write Caesar B.G. VI, XVI). And that the concerns of the druids of then were quite different than these of the monolatrous priests of today. The ancient druids tried to channel upwards all passions, but the sacred one then was present everywhere. For example, the sacred prostitution of the Namnete priestesses in their mysterious island close to the mouth of the Loire River. Once a year they tried to raise bodily passions on the level of the creating desire of the god-or-demons. See also on this subject the legendary episode of the adultery of the wife of Partholon.

These examples are enough to refute the so widespread idea that the druidic myths would have been risen only from popular imagination. Their interpretation was not intended to the passive herd, but to the elite of all the classes of the society, each one found there the spiritual food he was able to assimilate according to his level of evolution.

There exists, of course, some minor myths, some legends declining or become anecdotal, work of poets or bards without philosophical profundity, but we will not dwell too long above them.

What it is important to understand, it is that the druidic Panth-eon or Pleroma of then is very well organized, very well imagined or articulated. It was intended to the men who make the effort to leave the herd in order to research knowledge. The purpose of the druidic myth is, as we saw it, to make people (feeling) sensing something inexpressible by the transposition of a common account in the language of the Spirit. To start in us the forces of comprehension of the soul, able to make the truth springing. The druidic characteristic of the myth is to make being on a par some allegories which take place as well in the length and the time, as in the timeless one where the antiquated past mixes closely with the present and the future. The Celtic myths appreciably span frightening time depths.

Ancient druidic mythology brought to men the pure breath of the Sedodumnon (from the Sidh), the vigilant concern of its god-or-demons (who were iovantucarus, anextlomarus, virotutis dunatis contrebis etc.) , the active grace of its goddess-or-demonesses (who were mopates), the courage, the strength and the tenacity of its great heroes. To create ties with the family of the god-or-demons. Here what the ancient druids and their admirable civilization, their arts, their high ethics, sought.

To those whose soul/mind opened out, to the sons of a king even of a god-or-demon, the major Lepontic runes of the redemption (some god-or-demons are psychopomp, appealing or repelling, peaceful or wrathful our Tibetan friends say), to the people the minor Lepontic runes of the ethically right life (reda). And this ceaseless exchange with the god-or-demons, appeared profitable in all the fields. The ancient druids sought the harmony between the inner god-or-demon, and the physical body. The ancient druids had a very good knowledge of the bodies and of the souls.

Asceticism is not always essential to such a redemption if we are not attached too much to the things and if we are always ready to give up them on a sign of the Spirit, to search for the grail. Because only Soul or Spirit, highest shape of energy which is, exists eternally, matter being only this energy…. condensed.

In the time of Ambicatus (the one who fights on the two sides), spiritual world and material world interpenetrated still significantly, each one well in its place nevertheless, one supporting the other, one making it possible to understand the other. Men went still easily from the one to the other, especially in their sleep, and relations still existed between them and the god-or-demons.

This privilege, the ancient druids had it excessively, what explains why the first Celtic civilization was entirely centered on the religious phenomena, much more than on the material world. The life was simple and right and money had not yet wreaked havoc there, like today.

This intimate union of the beauty of the body and of the soul, as well as the profundity or enchantment of its religious feasts, made the Celticum of Ambicatus a spiritual and initiatory hub, fascinating the people of the south. The Greeks called it besides “Hyperborea “. In this time, priests were also doctors, astronomers, architects, lawyers, poets, historians and scientists.

102

What is below has one day to go back to its spring like salmon, while crowning the evolution. To melt with the solar spirit, to melt oneself in the (fire) Father (Aedus) of which they were the reflection, was their goal on this earth. Death is a priceless gift of the god-or-demons. If death did not exist, there would be no possible evolution. The elite of the great free and independent Celtica of Hallstattian then Latenian times (druids, princes and other sons of a king in the Celtica Litavia) had only one goal, its conquest, token certain of the maturity of these alleged Barbarians. And here is the tie between the men and the god-or-demons of this time. It is this tie which will make possible in an effective way, although invisible, the transubstantiation of Mankind. This force could in no case to be compared with some love, but with gravity. It is a force of attraction able to combine the elements.

103

THE ART OF COUNTER-LAY.

“They likewise discuss and impart to the youth many elements respecting the stars and their motion, respecting the extent of the world and of our earth, respecting the nature of things, respecting the power and the majesty of the immortal gods” (Caesar. B.G. VI. XIV).

“When you see those who meddle with our revelations, withdraw from them until they meddle with another topic” (Muhammad. Quran. VI, 68).

AN EXAMPLE OF DRUIDIC MYTH ABOUT THE NEXT WORLD OR THIS STATE OF BEING AFTER DEATH WE CAN CALL HEAVENLY.

Wilt thou come with me

To the wondrous land wherein harmony is,

Hair is like the crown of the primrose there.

And the body smooth and white as snow.

There, is neither mine or yours,

White are teeth there, dark the brows.

A delight of the eye the number of our hosts,

Every cheek there is of the hue of the foxglove.

A gillyflower is each one's neck,

A delight of the eye are blackbirds' eggs.

Though fair the prospect of the plain of Fal (the earth ?),

It is desolate after frequenting Mag Mar.

Though choice you deem the ale of Fal’s island,

More intoxicating is the ale of the Great Land.

A wondrous land is the land I tell of;

Youth departs not there before old.

Warm sweet streams flow through the land,

There are choice mead and wine

Stately folk without blemish,

Conception without sin, without lust.

We see everyone on every side,

And no one sees us.

It is the darkness of Adam's transgression

That hath prevented us from being counted ???

If thou come to my noble folk,

A crown of gold shall be upon thy head

Honey, wine, ale, fresh milk, and drink, thou shalt have.

AN EXAMPLE OF COUNTER-LAY NOW.

The good reflex is to be somewhat critical with respect to this kind of text and not “to swallow” anything without asking to oneself a minimum of questions. If I had only one piece of advice to give, it would be the following one: to always make what Mother Nature gave us between the two ears, a brain and not some cheese, working! Let us nobody thinking instead of us , even God (Jean Jaures could have said). This is also applied to Biblical and Quranic myths ad usum delphini because of taqiyya. It is therefore necessary to know to decipher. Always and still to decipher, such could be the conclusion of our study on druidic mythology.

But let us return to our sheep : the art of counter-lay.

104

The darkness of Adam's transgression ???

It is, of course, a Christian interpolation (a faking of the initial text worked out by Christian copyist monks). It should not be forgotten indeed that many Celtic literary topics passed into Celtic Christianity and by the way in the world Christianity (the purgatory All Saints' day, etc.). But chock full of details taken from the Christian monolatry.

Some of our Gaelic texts also refer for example to the concept of last judgment. The Gaelic term employed means simply judgment (bratha) but the chances are high indeed that that it is the typically Judeo-Islamic-Christian notion of doomsday.

As if God could judge his children! As we saw it, the high-knowers of Celtic people knew the notion of end of the world (or more exactly of a cosmic, cycle) but they imagined by no means a postmortem Manichean last judgment distributing at the end the souls or minds of the deceased persons in two camps, the happy few intended to live a heavenly existence for ever, and the damned persons intended to undergo the torments of hell for eternity. For the ancient Celts indeed everyone went to the Heaven. Even the Hitler or the Stalin? For Hitler or Stalin, the high-knowers of ancient druidiaction had thought of an intermediate solution: reincarnation ON EARTH after a passing in a kind of anteroom of Heaven (or of an anteroom of Hell in the Islamic-Christian perspective ). Anteroom of Heaven or of Hell having a name different according to the countries and the level of Christianization: Andumno= Annwvyn or Annwfn, sometimes Annwn, the kingdom or the house of Donn the dark (Tech Duinn) etc.

And now why you will say to me therefore, so many different names or images to designate the same state of being of the soul/mind of some deceased persons, between their death and their reincarnation, ON EARTH ? Because what was most important for the high-knowers of the ancient druidiaction; it was less to know precisely where the soul/minds went after death to live there “definitively” (let us say until the end of this cosmic cycle); because for them it was to be the same place for everybody (in fact a state of being); than to have a little understanding of the place into which they precisely therefore, and in a way by definition located, will reappear on Earth (it is we uns with our modern mentality who take the problem backwards). Clearly for the soul/minds of the deceased persons there is only one focal point after death, but a several even infinity of dispersion points in the (extremely rare) cases of return to earth.

Here and there conversely genuinely pagan details could survive.

In the Irish legend of the adventure of Cormac in the land of promise (echtra cormaic i tir tairngiri), we find for example the detail or the mention of a roof already half-thatched with the wings of white birds. Roof made of feathers of white birds, etc. What does mean this description? A sacrifice of swans? A variant of the account of Strabo saying that the Namnetae priestesses redo each year the roof of their sanctuary? (Strabo. Geography. Book IV, chapter IV, 6).

They are isolated details or taken out of their context from a more important legendary account. Like in the case of the romances of the Round-Table, Christian censure made the whole initial coherence disappeared from these myths. On the other hand, Christianity, of course, used such distorted and taken out of their context accounts for his visions of heaven of hell or of purgatory, like these of Adamnan, Drythelm, Tnugdal, Laisren, St. Fursy and St. Patrick.

Conclusion.

This text is therefore without any doubt initially a description of heaven according to the druids.

Some reminds on this subject nevertheless.

For druids there is only heaven after death, with a few exceptions: extremely rare cases of bacucaeaction or penalizing reincarnation, kind a few tens a generation. Just like there can be a few tens of cases a generation of voluntary reincarnation in order to help the other human beings remained on earth (great initiates or semnothei called Bodhisattvas in Buddhism).

Semnotheos in fact is a Greek term meaning something as venerable and god, designating some druidic great initiates in some of their texts.

To refer to our previous counter-lays on these questions.

This heavenly next world is not a place but a state of being.

It is traditionally composed of several parts or states of being which intermingle: the world of the dead and the world of the gods. From where the possibility for the late ones of seeing the gods there.

The soul and the mind of the dead, always initially united, are reincarnated there in another body, which is that of before their death, but regenerated (no ethereal or in a state of ghostly shadow, survival, in druidic spirituality: the tandem soul/mind survives death but in an ideal bellissamos or bellissama body, completely made of luan laith, Irishmen would say ,of xvarnah would say Mazdean Persians, of glory would say Christians). From where all these descriptions.

105

Here there exist no longer private property since abundance reigns. The majority of the fragments of legend having survived to us having been texts of oral literature intended for the warriors class, the human beings of aggressive temperament , always looking for a fight (there are some people like that) are served there (but death, of course, exists no longer there, or at least if you die there it is to come back to life at once afterwards. For example, the magic pigs of Belin/Belen/Barinthus son of Lero/Lir, known as the mannish (Manannan).

There are also fragments of all this flourishing oral literature of formerly obviously intended for the human beings of, let us say more druidic temperament (study meditations worship of the gods: see the accounts by Plutarch about various islands). Editor’s note.Jung would have spoken of druidic archetype.

Were to also exist in this case some descriptions (some sermons?) intended for the human beings coming rather within the third function or for the comparable functions (overcome people, atectai) but here there is no longer something.

In this parallel next world of heavenly type (Mag Mar, Mag Mell, Tir na n’Og, etc.) the mind of the deceased persons (menman) little by little will grow blurred (first phase of the individual aredengto, Gaelic erdathe).

Then it will be the turn of the soul or anamone itself, which, after its complete blooming in this next world of heavenly type (buddhakshetra Buddhists say), will dissolve in the Big Whole of the universal cosmic soul (second phase of the individual aredengto called moksha in Hinduism).

For more details to refer to our lessons on the subject.

106

APPENDIX No. 1.

REMINDER ABOUT THE NOTION OF METAHISTORY.

The revolt of the angels against God or the Demiurge and the fall of Lucifer, in Judeo-Islamic-Christianity, are a good example of Metahistory.

Its sacred book presents to us Elohim (word translated falsely by God) creating the World which is ours by organizing preexistent Tohu wa Bohu. But this text shows us nowhere their higher god creating the angels, to start with Lucifer. However this notion (the revolt of certain angels) is nevertheless essential to its view of the World. You can understand nothing in the design of the History seen by Judeo-Islamic-Christianity, if you don’t admit before the creation of this world, the creation of an angelic world and therefore purely spiritual or almost (some negligible traces of matter), world ; having witnessed the revolt against God of a certain number of them, as well as the forfeiture of the first man losing his preternatural capacities. It is what we call Metahistory.

One of its best illustrations is still that John Milton provided us in his poem on paradise lost; a poem reporting the original sin, the war between the "loyalist" angels and the “rebellious “angels “ and presenting the various protagonists in an extremely well-informed way.

Lucifer, the fallen angel, has just been overcome by the divine armies. With his army, he is on the point of starting again an attack against the Heaven when he hears of a prophecy: a new species of creatures has to be formed by the Heaven. He then decides to leave alone in expedition. Having left the hell, he ventures in the paradise, and finds the new world being created by God. After having easily deceived an angel by changing his appearance, he goes into the paradise and discovers Adam and Eve. God is informed , but decides to do nothing : he created the man free, and he will grant to him his grace whatever happens… if, however, he respects divine justice. His Son, thinking the sentence severe, begs his Father to take on him the sins of the men, what this one accepts. After some doubts, Satan works out a plan to harm God and Man: having been informed that God forbade human beings to eat the fruits of the tree of knowledge, He tries, in a dream, to tempt Eve. But unwillingly , he wakes up also Adam, who drives him out . God then sends an angel to warn them, and to inform them about their enemy, so that they have no excuse. Later, Satan returns to the attack: he takes advantage of the fact that Eve moved away from Adam in order to harvest something, and, taking the shape of a snake, he tempts her again and proposes to her the fruit of the forbidden tree, successfully. Eve then will tell her adventure to the unfortunate Adam, and proposes to him to taste it also , to what this one ends up yielding, for love.

As soon as God informed, he sends his Son to pronounce the sentence: they will be driven out Paradise, and Satan as is companions, will be transformed into snakes. The Son, then taking pity on them, covers them with his power. Nevertheless Adam realizes what he lost, and sinks into despair. God then sends again an angel to show to the first man (Adam) the future of his descent until the flood. The latter , reassured, is led then by the angel Michael with Eve out of the Paradise. The blazing sword falls behind them, and the cherubs come forward there to guard the from now on forbidden place.

Comment. Such an explanation of the human condition and of our weaknesses is childish and therefore making childish. Moreover we don’t understand really the reason of this prohibition to consume fruit of the tree of knowledge. A fragment of the original Sumerian myth therefore had to be forgotten or concealed in fact, a crucial fragment, however, and which was to be necessary to a good comprehension of this myth.

Sometimes some people ascribe to the Devil the name of Lucifer or Samael. That comes from the time when he had not rebelled yet, with the assistance of the fallen angels, against God. Samael is therefore his name of angel meaning “The bringer of light “ a strange name for a Lord of Darkness. The explanation to this tradition is in the Bible and more precisely in the book of Isaiah (XIV, 12-17).

How you are fallen from heaven,

O Day Star, son of Dawn!

How you are cut down to the ground,

You who laid the nations low!

You said in your heart,

107

I will ascend to heaven;

Above the stars of God

I will set my throne on high;

I will sit on the mount of assembly

In the far reaches of the north;

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds

I will make myself like the Most High.

But you are brought down to Sheol,

To the far reaches of the pit.

Those who see you will stare at you

And ponder over you:

Is this the man who made the earth tremble,

Who shook kingdoms,

Who made the world like a desert

And overthrew its cities,

Who did not let his prisoners go home?’

It is generally admitted that Lucifer rebelled against his creator pushed by his arrogance and his haughtiness. But the first theologists were not all convinced that it was hubris. According to the majority of them, the fall of Lucifer would be rather due to his jealousy towards Man.

According to saint Gregory of Nyssa (catechetical oration ), the understandable world existed before the other, and each angelic power had received from the authority which directs everything, its own share of the government of the universe. To the one of these powers had been entrusted the responsibility to govern and control the globe. Then was modeled, with clay, an image which reproduced that of the higher power, and this being was the man. He had in him the divine beauty of the understandable nature, mingled with a certain secret force. For this reason the one to whom the government of the earth had been entrusted, found strange and intolerable that, from the nature which depended on him, was drawn or brought into the world a being made in the image of the higher being.

It is only with Origen that we see coming up and being confirmed the theory which overcomes today; that of the hubris, the idea of the jealousy and desire will reappear only in the 16th century. But needless to remind that a large number of Christian writers, except Tertullian, placed in the jealousy the true cause of this rebellion. The jealousy and the desire are feelings unworthy of an angelic creature; in Lucifer, they become so burning and powerful that they pushed him to the revolt against the Creator.

But it should be said that the jealousy of Lucifer towards Man is less absurd and sacrilege than that which he would then have felt towards God. Adam, although endowed with distinguished preternatural graces, was, however, a creature, a being which could be considered of the same race as angels. To want to make oneself independent of God, to be opposed to God, was the mark of an absurd frenzy, a piece of evidence of madness, while the jealousy towards a creature is more natural and probable. The difference between God and his sons * is immeasurable and non-estimatable, while the difference between the angels and the men exists only in the level of their respective perfection **. The jealousy led Satan to the rebellion, which is an inexcusable fault, but the first engine of this rebellion is much less serious than our intolerance teaches.

If we hold for true the assumption of Dante, Lucifer sinned twice: by hubris and impatience. But this last sin is the first, even the most serious, since it caused the other; if Lucifer had been able to wait, he would have become aware his hubris was only pure madness.

NON SERVIAM: it is reproached Lucifer this famous word! But was this word really pronounced by the prince of the angels? Didn't God concede to his creatures and particularly to angels, a free will? Didn’t God say to men: “Truth will make you free! “And wasn't Lucifer, already favored by the grace of God, entirely free? Because if he were not free, how could he have revolted against the Creator? The desire not to serve , i.e., freedom, wasn't always one of the marks of the proud and generous minds?

If God knows everything, sees everything, envisages everything, he was to know therefore that Lucifer, because of his superiority even, was prone to fall, therefore that he would fall. This gift of free will was to give to Lucifer the possibility of sinning, therefore of falling. His superiority was what started the hubris, and freedom was what made his fall possible. God created a world where the sin remains possible, the revolt possible, the evil possible, the self-damnation possible. If there did not exist in the

108

world the evil possibility, angelic freedom and human freedom could have made a free choice between the various orders of the good, of the good works, and of the right actions. It is not Lucifer who created the world, it was not created on its own, it is therefore not his fault if the order of the world makes it possible or allows the sin. If God is the author and the universal lawgiver, if nothing is possible neither conceivable without his will nor against his law, we may conclude from it that he has his share of responsibility in what occurred to his creatures. He made them in this way, placed in a reality which is also his creation, and where everything is possible! It is therefore in him only that any admirable or terrible thing, has its cause and its principle.

God only wished to promote or exalt, to make the creatures ascend up to the summit where the non-being can reach the being, and he had to attend the abandonments, the revolts, the desertions, the falls. He had created an angel more perfect than the others, nearer to him, more similar to him, and this angel fell. He had created a miraculous being, modeled by his hands, moved by his breath, equipped with conscience and science, and the man also fell. Most divine of the heavenly creatures rose against God. Most divine of the earthly creatures disobeyed God. Neither one nor the other could refuse the privileges of freedom. Isn't the punishment of Lucifer also the punishment of God?

* Sons of God. According to the satanic verses Allah had three “daughters” Manat, Uzza, Al' lat. And why not also regard as sons of God Taranis Belenos and all the others ?

** We can say of it as much about gods and men.

THE METAHISTORY ACCORDING TO THE DRUIDS.

The Celts, themselves, made the opposite exactly. They even never clearly distinguished History and Fiction. For them all was an account (scèl). What strictly speaking we call today Myth not to say History. Besides it is enough to look a little into the multitude of the Irish legends to realize that, in Ireland at least, the divine world is far from being motionless and immutable. It is on the contrary overflowing with battles, coups d'etat, or confrontations, would it be only that of the two battles of the mounds plain. The life of the Celtic god-or-demons is not a bed of roses, and it is much more lively than that of the angels of Yahweh (who never experimented but one movement of rebellion; that which was fought by the deposed archangel the Christians call Lugifer). There exist indeed traces of another revolt of Celtic god-or-demons, we guess in the writings of Plutarch speaking about the island of mysterious Celtic Cronos. According to this author indeed, the Fate or Tokad (Kronos in interpretatio graeca) had been indeed the victim of an attempt of coup d’etat which would have changed him into a true deus otiosus; relegated in one of the islands off Great Britain.

Ah this damned Gaelic heresy Gaelic: a fifth fabulous island in the center of a square formed by the islands of the children of goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), in the north of the world, Falias, Findias, Gorias, and Murias? Although a deus otiosus, that can wake up from time to time.

What follows is therefore meta-history, not more illegitimate than that of the Bible or of Plutarch; but inspired by some reflections on what we learn from the family competitions between god-or-demons in the Irish legend entitled “the fate of the children of Tuireann “. It is obvious indeed in reading this text, there exist two antagonistic branches of the tribe of goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Danu (bia), the children of Cainte (Cu, Ceitheann and Cian, therefore Lug) and the children of Tuireann, Brian, Iuchar, Iucharba, not forgetting their sister Eithne.

One of the scenarios suggested by the druidism, with variants according to the Schools, is that of the withdrawal of the god-or-demons out of this world: the world having been organized, the god-or-demons cease being active, and let it continue its evolution according to its own laws.

In druidic mythology, the Man is able to overcome the god-or-demons.“ Other nations undertake wars in defense of their religious feelings; they wage war against the religion of every people; other nations when waging war beg for sanction and pardon from the immortal gods; they have waged war with the immortal gods themselves“

(Cicero. Pro Mr. Fonteio oratio, XIII-XIV, 30-31).

“ The victorious Brennus, turned his thoughts to the temples of the immortal gods, saying, with a profane jest, that “the gods, being rich, ought to be liberal to men." He suddenly, therefore, directed his

109

march towards Delphi, regarding plunder more than religion, and caring for gold more than for the wrath of the deities, " who," he said, " stood in no need of riches, as being accustomed rather , to bestow them on mortals."……(Trogue Pompey, philippic Histories, XXIV, 6, according to Justin, Epitoma historiarum philippicarum.)

From where the prophecy of Callimachus on this subject. “One day hereafter you will come to fight with us a common struggle, when the Titans of a later day rouse up against the Hellenes barbarian sword and the Celtic Ares, and from the furthest West rush on like snowflakes “ (Hymns IV, 170-185).

Here what this important druidic notion gave in the Irish legends after historicization or euhemerism in the wrong way of the original myth. The first battle between human beings and god-or-demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, Danu; takes place at Sliab Mis, and ends in a clear victory of human beings over the troops of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Banuta/Banba/Banva.

Finally, after new and bloody fights, in the last one of which Belinos Barinthus Manannan , son of Lir (God-or-demon of the ocean) takes part; for the possession of the Talantio (Tailtiu/Teltown. The goddess or demoness or fairy, in question, has as a continental equivalent : Rosemartha); the battle of Druim Lighean (or Druim Ligen today Drumleene close to Raphoe, in County Donegal); Loch Feabhail Mhic-Lodain (what means Lake of Feval, son of Lodan today Lough Foyle) or Glenn Faisi according to the variants; a pact of peace will be concluded. It is agreed to divide the country in two equal shares. A man by the name of Amairgin (a name invented by the Irish bards) made the division: the men of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), got the lower half of the earth, the underground; the human beings led by Ariomanos (Eremon) got the higher half, the surface.

God-or-demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), thus yield the surface of the earth to the newcomers, and withdrew in the lands of the Hereafter , or take refuge under the hillocks; while requiring for compensation only worship and some sacrifices celebrated in remembrance of them. At the time of Samon (ios), god-or-demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), authorize the mortals to cross the threshold of it. Thus the religion will begin. After a victory of the men over the god-or-demons, rather strangely.

To each one his place. Men on earth and god-or-demons in the hereafter .

Some of the god-or-demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Danu (bia), were withdrawn in a remote region, “Across “ the sea of the West, called Mag Meld (the plain of the joy) or Tir na n’Og (land of youth). There centuries are minutes; those who live there, age no longer; the meadows are covered with eternal flowers; mead fills up the bed of the rivers. Feasts and battles are favorite pastimes: the warriors eat and drink fairylike dishes and beverages; they have as partners women with a charming beauty.

The rest of the god-or-demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu, found a refuge in splendid underground residences that hillocks signal to the glance of human beings. To these new dwellings, the god-or-demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), from now on invisible, owe their Irish name: aes sidhe (people of the sidh).

It is indeed by this name, shortened in sidh or shee, that the Irish people continue to designate the invisible people of the fairies: the ban shees (literally: the women of the hillocks) of the popular beliefs, of whom the appearance is sometimes a sign of death.

110

APPENDIX No. 2.

THE BACKWARD EUHEMERISM OR HISTORICIZATION.

The exact reverse of euhemerism is indeed the historicization (of myth).

Some examples.

The Roman case.

George Dumezil, extending to the first two centuries of the Republic an investigation not long ago limited (except the one-eyed and the one-handed ) to the beginnings and to the royal Rome, also showed that the history of this relatively recent period also falls and to a great extent within the historicization of a mythical matter: the material which basically was used for the manufacturing of the aforesaid history is anything else only some “mythology lost as mythology,” some folklore, some legends,some … stories. The myths were brought back from the great world to this world and the heroes are no longer the gods of it, but the great men of Rome, who took their place. This absence of myth is not a defect (as if Roman religion remained below the threshold of the mythical development), but is the evidence of a fast demythologization , by deletion and oblivion, in a people of which at the same time empirical and legalist mind is especially attentive to strict observance.

Exemplary is, from this point of view, the famous overflow of the Alban lake occurring in the last of the ten years of war against Veii. The comparison of the Roman data relative to this wonder with the Vedic ritual of Apam Napat and the Avestan god having the same name, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, with the Irish legend of the well of Nechtan, forces us to recognize in this alleged “historical event” the historicization of an Indo-European myth telling how a lake or a well of which water contains a certain force, generally conceived as having the nature of fire, overflows suddenly by the will of one or several gods to punish a sacrilege or a non-believer, and gives rise thus to a marvelous river.

The Christian case.

The ascension of the Nazorean Jesus is also a historicized myth.

Historically, the feast of the Ascension appeared in the Church only around the end of the 3rd century and it is spread in the last quarter of the 4th century. The canonical accounts of the “ascension” are therefore not some “historical facts,” but a “historicized” myth, because they fall under the imagination and the representation of the first Christians.

The accounts of “the ascension” are myths to which the first Christians gave a “historical look” through an implicit comparison with the apotheosis of Roman emperors.

They are based on three elements: the structure of the universe according to the Former Greeks; the ascension of the great Nazorean rabbi into the heaven and his “sitting at the right hand of God.”

For the Former Greeks indeed, the universe was composed of three parts: firstly, the earth designed as a motionless flat disc around which the sun rises in the east and sets in the west; then, sky above the earth, then the residence of God; and lastly, under the ground, the hell, the field of the damned persons.

It is remarkable to note that the myth works out to the character hero of this metaphysical novel or of this lawyer plea (Yehoshua Bar Yosef) a transfer of the “imperial” power.

The “sitting at the right-hand of God” symbolizes a delegation of the supreme power over “the inhabited earth” (“oikoumené”), which matched the space of the Roman or Greek Empire then! It is therefore , obviously, a staging of the opposition of the “two reigns”: that of “Caesar” (the Emperor) and that of the Nazorean called Jesus (“kurios Kaisar” and “kurios Iesous”).

The case of the Christian Irish bards or the copyist monks.

We find in the Gaelic account entitled the exile of the sons of Doel Dermott mention of a mysterious character named Eochu.

111

Just like the mysterious Condla the thin also quoted in this legend, the Eochu of this mysterious island (Eochu Glass) is apparently a kind of Aeolus able to unchain the winds. When it is thought that some people still make all these characters of the Ulster Cycle men or women having really historically existed.

Let us repeat it once again because repetere = ars docendi, there is at least in all these accounts to characterize our heroes many features not falling within true even exaggerated reality but within myth quite simply. They are either some characters having really existed but who were little by little endowed by our famous bards with powers or superhuman, nonhuman (normal euhemerism) characteristics. Or mythical figures, gods or demons, that some Irish Christians of the Early Middle Ages (some monks?) preferred to change into men, of course, not very ordinary but quite human, in the flesh (historicization or upside-down euhemerism).

Labraid’s case.

Best known Labraid is the one who is called in Gaelic language Loingsech (the exiled one, the ultramarine one). It is on the face of things a historical character, high-king of Ireland, ancestor of the Laginians in Leinster. Undoubtedly an adventurer come to settle here leading a powerful troop of warriors come from the continent, and more precisely from Armorica according to T.F.O'Rahilly.

Láithe gaile Galián

gabsit inna lamaib laigne

Lagin of sin

slóg Galain glonnach

But certain Irish documents present to us nevertheless this “historical” Labraid as a true god reigning on men (and gods).

Ór ós gréin glemair

gabais for doine domnaib sceo déib

dia oín ace Moín

macc Áine oen-ríg.

Labraid being an adjective meaning something like eloquent or talkative, it has to be an epithet indicating a god better known under another name and our author therefore reused there (for his biography of the historical Labraid) some details drawn by the bards from mythology or from the worship of this divine figure.

One of the lays which follow resembles much for example the kind of prayers which man could address to a deity at the same time god of eloquence and of war like Ogma in Ireland Ogmius on the continent. Except that the detail of the chariot corresponds more to Taran/Toran/Tuireann than to Ogmius.

The case of King Arthur.

Let us remind, first of all, that, despite all the Hollywood imagery on this subject, the historical framework of the initial action of King Arthur is not the 12th but the Roman Empire finishing i.e., the end of the 5th century.

Fixed in a complex national history, based on several forms of media (chronicles, poems, songs, annals), the myth of King Arthur could evolve while adapting to the circumstances and while answering, always more precisely, to the paradigmatic and identity needs of the social group. Fluid, moving, rich, this pre-Galfridian matter of Britain reached us as one of the great myths of the Western History (the claims of the Plantagenet dynasty have something to do there : the Britain of Arthur including roughly speaking the southern third of current Scotland).

112

By locating the main events of the life of Arthur where the local population recognized the ruins of a last splendor and while falling under toponymy related at the same time on the Roman Empire and the former warlike exploits, the people spreading the myth made so that it takes part at the same time in reality and truth.

Geoffrey of Monmouth ensured his credibility while claiming to take as a starting point a mysterious book written in Brythonic language (librum vetustissimum). While thus proceeding, he deferred the responsibility of telling the truth on an anonymous and unverifiable source.

RETURN TO LIVY.

Let us reconsider the case of Titus-Livius because several of the facts reported by him are in reality Celtic myths.

We already spoke higher about the studies of George Dumezil about the attitude of the Romans with regard to the myth: although their culture is based on the same myths as these of the other Indo-European peoples, the Romans have historicized this pool, in a process of demythologization which transferred on the factual and historical level what at the others pertained to the field of mythology.

This process (of historicization of myths, of transposition of fables in events), was particularly very used by the annalists or their predecessors. Used so, it is even characteristic of Rome.

Nec adfirmare nec refellere.

“ The traditions which have come down to us of what happened before the building of the city, or before its building was contemplated, as being suitable rather to the fictions of poetry than to the genuine records of history, I have no intention either to affirm or refute. This indulgence is conceded to antiquity, that by blending things human with divine, it may make the origin of cities appear more venerable: and if any people might be allowed to consecrate their origin, and to ascribe it to the gods as its authors, such is the renown of the Roman people in war that when they represent Mars, in particular, as their own parent and that of their founder, the nations of the world may submit to this as patiently as they submit to their sovereignty. But in whatever way these and such like matters shall be attended to, or judged of, I shall not deem of great importance. I would have every man apply his mind seriously to consider these points, viz. what their life and what their manners were; through what men and by what measures, both in peace and in war, their empire was acquired and extended…. But in matters of such remote antiquity, I should deem it sufficient if matters bearing some resemblance to truth be admitted as true. Such stories as this, more suited to display on the stage, which delights in the marvelous, than to historic authenticity, it is not worth while either to affirm or refute” (Livy, The History of Rome Book I, 1).

“Sed in rebus tam antiquis si quae similia ueri sint pro ueris accipiantur, satis habeam: haec ad ostentationem scenae gaudentis miraculis aptiora quam ad fidem neque adfirmare neque refellere est operae pretium .”

Is it a refusal to cut short dictated by a preoccupation with a facility? Undoubtedly should be sought the front explanation.

As Mario Mazza (Storia e ideologia in Livio) notices it, “ se Livio, con un procedimento di derivazione stoica, sospende il giudizio teoretico intorno alla "storicità" dei fatti raccontati nelle "poeticae fabulae", è perchè un giudizio di tale tipo è per lui non necessario a questo riguardo: il problema deve risolversi su un piano diverso: sul piano di quel pragmatismo moralistico (...). Il procedimento ha pero un preciso significato ed un preciso scopo, che si chiarisce non con una critica — "razionalistica" direbbe lo studioso moderno— bensi considerando il valore pragmatico, strumentale, di un tradizione, nell'ambito stesso della comunità cui essa è appunto sorta: poichè essa tradizione, Livio asserisce, ha sempre in sè una verità, oggettivamente "simbolica" (e quindi soggetivamente "pragmatica")

“If Livy, by a typically stoic process, adjourns any theoretical judgment on “the historicity” of the facts reported in the “poeticae fabulae,” because a judgment of this kind is not necessary at all for him in this respect: the problem finds its solution on another level, on the plan of this moral pragmatism (...) the process, however, has a precise sense and a purpose which is not it less precise, and which is not

113

reduced to a - “rationalist” our modern students would say- criticism, but rather to taking into account of the pragmatic, and useful, value, of the tradition, within the community of which he is precisely member: because tradition, Livy maintains, always has a truth in itself, objectively “symbolic” (and therefore subjectively “pragmatic”).

If the Romans made their mythology passed into their history, it is therefore not just to be understandable, in order to meet a need for rationalization. It is also through a requirement of moral realism we will find later in the use they will make of the gift that the Greeks will bring to them by giving them historiography.”

But does not what disappears in the demythologization, reappear elsewhere, in another form, with different diagram or methods?

N.B. We will thus reconsider in these some opuscules the case of Livy because this Roman historian historicized several Celtic myths including after the date of the foundation of Rome.

114

APPENDIX No. 3.

THE EUHEMERISM.

The euhemerism is a theory according to which gods are real characters who would have been deified after their death, their legend being simplified and made more beautiful in time until there remains of it only a kind of absolute and universal symbolism. It took its name from the Greek mythographer Euhemerus.

Principles.

This current of thought thus postulates mythological characters were normal human beings, whose memory would have been deified by the fear or the admiration of the population. Such a theory came just at the right time to satisfy the cultivated minds of Antiquity who could no longer take the myths at face value. Although euhemerism was used, at the beginning of the Christian era, as a weapon against paganism and polytheism (cf. Tertullian, Saint Augustine, etc.), the Middle Ages used of these theories for lastly preserving the pagan myths in their metaphorical dimension while removing from them their supernatural dimension - within the framework of the study.

Euhemerism therefore fits into the medieval tradition of exegesis of the ancient texts which considered that the myths, contained in the poetry of Ovid and Virgil (whose grandfather was a druid) particularly, included hidden metaphorical meanings, and that people could discover Christian precepts in them. This vast project of rationalization of the myths, among other things, made it possible the preservation of important ancient texts, which without that would have disappeared of course (the Church Fathers granting a moral superiority to their sacred texts and condemning the reading of the poets or philosophers of the pagan era. The pitiless censorship of these talibans of Christianity explains why many ancient books arrived to us only in the state of allusion - generally negative - or of truncated fragments).

This process is undoubtedly at work in many legends of founder kings of the ancient cities (like Romulus and Remus or Hercule). It was even actively diverted by the propaganda of the Pharaohs, eager to bring a divine aura to the least one of their gestures. Thus, on the monuments commemorating military victories, Pharaohs were regularly represented massacring alone whole armies with bare hands.

Still in the 12th -13th centuries, the Icelandic Christian mythographer Snorri Sturluson writes an Edda, which shows the Scandinavian deities as historical characters, whose legend would have been made more beautiful by the pagan tradition (yes, what is awkward for our Odinist and Godi brothers in paganism, it is that their sacred texts are even more sprinkled with Christian influences than ours).

Salomon Reinach called even the life of Jesus (1863) by Ernest Renan “naive euhemerism”, what is perhaps exaggerated.

N.B. The sociologist Jean-Bruno Renard created the term “neo-euhemerism” to designate the ancient astronaut theory. According to Erich Von Däniken for example, the sarcophagus lid of the Maya king Pacal discovered in Palenque in Mexico would represent one of these ancient astronauts ascending to the stars in his spaceship. The Elohim of the Bible would be aliens we would also find traces of their flying “machines” in the Ramayana (the vimanas).

115

APPENDIX No. 4.

TYPOLOGY OF GODS OR DEMONS.

There exist three main categories of gods in our world, the world of the men of today.

Gods of the Laertian type ( sébein theoùs Dogenes Laertius third century) or of the official dominant religion, like Allah Jehovah or the god of Abraham Isaac and Jacob if it is not the same one.

Gods matching forces of surrounding physical nature.

The forces of the human nature staged by poets or writers (in short by the bards).

We know on good authority that there was in the area of Marseilles some druids able to talk in Greek language with Lucian of Samosata (yes, Greek language played a little at the time the role of the Globish nowadays, it debases our language by simplifying it with excess and in making it lose all its savor, all its soul, but it also places at the disposal of each one the whole knowledge of the world thanks to the web).

Allow a today druid i.e., primarily a commentator, to refer now to the Roman theologist Varro and his Greek predecessors.

Why Varro will you say to me?? Because right from the mouth of his detractors, his work lacked in originality because very representative of the ideas spread at the time among thinkers from all sides of the Mediterranean Sea [therefore probably also among our dear druids of the area of Marseilles], including Greek besides.

What will also by contrast enable us to emphasize the deep stupidity or intellectual dishonesty (completely comparable with these of the French journalists of today fighting or supporting such or such policy instead of informing the general public) of the Christian authors having wrongfully presented it so of their necessity .

Also let us note that Varro is the inventor of the concept of Laertian (sébein theoùs) or dominant theology when he speaks about civil theology. Because what is the civil theology of Varro if it is not the dominant theology of his time, the equivalent of our current Islam ? Or of Judeo-Christianity?

It therefore results from the profitable dialog with the Greek philosophers that any human being who thinks a little bit of these questions can distinguish three categories, different although having many relationships between them, or four, of gods, spiritualities, worships, religions, and therefore ultimately of theologies.

Here (in the order or in a totally random way according to the points of view).

The NATURAL gods spiritualities worships religions and theology, OF THE PHYSICAL NATURE, etc.

The gods spiritualities worships religions and theologies of the bards poets and storytellers and of the mythologies.

The gods spiritualists worships religions and theologies let us say of “Laercian” type i.e.matching this triad reported by Diogenes Laertius

“ Sébein theoùs kaì mēdèn kakòn drãn kaì andreían askeĩn ” “ To reverence the gods, to abstain from wrongdoing, and to be a man, a true one.”

Or the gods worships dominant religions and theology which are more or less State religions. Case of Muhammad considering the isma with which he is surrounded (a true idolatry), even of Islam in France today, for example ! You cannot criticize the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD., to underline their lacks of objective bases, the non truths, the dangers, they make human rights risk… without attending a true general outcry (moreover in France it is even straightforwardly prohibited by the practical application which is made of the 1990 Gayssot Law to criticize this religion and to point out certain truths about it).

But let us return to our sheep!

116

According to Jean Pepin (French Philosopher and Theologist, 1924 - 2005).

Tertullian and Augustine are well the only authors of Antiquity to deal with the tripartite theology while ascribing it expressly to Varro or Scaevola. But we meet written by various other writers the expression of similar doctrines, without them ascribing it namely to anyone.

Aetius. - We find a trace of this tripartition in the Placita Philosophorum by Aetius, a doxographer who probably pertains to the end of the 1st century or the beginning of the 2nd. Like the Discourse of Dio Chrysostom, the chapter of Aetius seeks from where the men drew the notion of gods; he states that, according to the Stoics, the main origin of this notion in the human man lies in the spectacle of the beauty of the universe; so is it justifiably that theologists, distinguishing three forms in the veneration of the gods, consider firstly the physical piety of the philosophers, then the mythical piety of the poets and lastly the legal piety ordered by the city (Sébein theoùs).

This text is in accordance with these of the Pseudo-Plutarch, of Dio and of Eusebius, who besides are later to it and are probably inspired by it; like them, it reproduces the essence of the tripartition of Varron. The order in which the three theologies appear is not there the usual order mythical-physical-legal; but the fact that Aetius begins with the physical theology is explained sufficiently by his intention of calling upon the tripartition in support of the cosmic origin of the notion of God. More interesting are his notations on the source of the tripartite theology; he presents it, not as his personal discovery, but as the object of a tradition; moreover, the whole chapter being devoted to expound the origin of the notion of God according to stoicism, the development of the tripartition which fits there appears to be given for stoic doctrines.

Plutarch, in a passage of his dialogue on Love, wonders about the origin of our ideas; he discovers that, except for these which slip into our mind following a feeling, they reach us in three ways, according to whether they are brought by a fable, imposed by a law, or worked out by reason; our ideas about the gods check this theory: as feeling could not play a role in their genesis, their presence in us, results from the action of the poets, lawgivers, or philosophers.

“ For it may be, my dear friend, Plutarch writes, there is not any thing in the world which was not made perceptible by sense, but what gained credit and authority at the first either from fables, or from the law, or else from rational discourse. And therefore poets, lawgivers, and in the third place philosophers, were all along the first that instructed and confirmed us in our opinion of the Gods ” (Plutarch, Of Love 18).

These three groups of characters, Plutarch continues, agree that there are gods; but concerning their number, their order, their respective attributions, they vastly differ one among another: the philosophers are opposed to the poets and to the lawgivers, and the poets and the lawgivers to the philosophers; but, just as formerly, in Athens, the person of Solon united the party of the coast, that of the mountain and that of the plain, there is a god on whom poets, philosophers and lawgivers are unanimous it is the god of Love, whose supremacy is accepted by Hesiod, Plato and Solon, quoted as representatives of each of the three groups.

Nothing in this text indicates that Plutarch does not draw from his own stock this distinction between the three sources of our ideas about the gods; he would insinuate rather than he is himself the author, since he presents it, not as a fact; but as the application, to the particular case of theology, of a general theory on the origin of our knowledge: from a known principle, he would have drawn a new conclusion. But his distinction of the philosophers, poets and lawgivers as responsible for our theological designs is too close to the tripartition of Scaevola and Varro to allow this view of the things; because the Varronian tripartition did not take place only between the theologies or the gods, but between the introducers of gods, insinuatores deorum, or more exactly between the gods distinguished according to their introducers; and those, in Plutarch like in Varro- Scaevola, are divided into three identical groups; undoubtedly the two Latin theologists did not speak about “lawgivers,” but their “peoples” and “statesmen” were considered in their activity of nomothetes, which comes to the same thing. We could therefore dispute Plutarch and his two predecessors deal with the same tripartition.

Lastly, it is not indifferent to the continuation of this debate to notice that this praise of Love is pervaded with Stoic reminiscences, to which Plutarch“did not feel reluctant” as much as he says it;

117

for example, he quotes some pages further a word from Chrysippus (who is not named) on the beauty considered as “the flower of virtue”; moreover, towards the end of the Dialogue, he opposes the integral union of the husbands in the marriage to the touch and interweaving of Epicurus’s atoms; however this description of the marital love by comparison with the various touches and interweaving is dealt with the same words by the Stoic Antipater of Tarsus in one of his treatises. Therefore let us remember for the moment that the tripartition called upon by Plutarch appears in a partially Stoic context.

At the time even of Plutarch, i.e., to the borders of the 1st and of the 2nd century of our era, Dio Chrysostom devotes the 12th of his discourses to write an essay on man’s first design of God. He distinguishes between a primary and absolute origin , and some later and complementary sources:

The fundamental source is the idea even of God, universal, timeless, former to any experiment, inseparable from human mind; this on the face of things notion constitutes the essential ground on which a secondary source can become fertile which, by means of oral traditions or of written documents, introduced from outside into the thought of Mankind an adventitious and acquired idea of God; this second notion takes itself two forms, according to whether it is proposed as an invitation by the poets, and freely received, or although it is imposed as an obligation by the laws:

“ Of man's belief in the deity and his assumption that there is a god we were maintaining that the fountain-head, as we may say, or source, was that idea which is innate in all mankind and comes into being as the result of the actual facts and the truth, an idea that was not framed confusedly nor yet at random, but has been exceedingly potent and persistent since the beginning of time, and has arisen among all nations and still remains, being, one may almost say, a common and general endowment of rational beings.

As the second source, we designate the idea which has been acquired and indeed implanted in men's souls through no other means than narrative accounts, myths, and customs, in some cases ascribed to no author and also unwritten, but in others written and having as their authors men of very great fame. Of this acquired notion of the divine being let us say that one part is voluntary and due to the exhortation, another part compulsory and prescriptive. By the kind that depends upon voluntary acceptance and exhortation, I mean that which is handed down by the poets, and by the kind that depends upon compulsion and prescription I mean that due to the lawgivers [we could say today due to the media class and to its fatwas]. I call these secondary because neither of them could possibly have gained strength unless that primary notion had been present to begin with; and because it was present, there took root in mankind, of their own volition and because they already possessed a sort of foreknowledge, the prescriptions of the lawgivers and the exhortations of the poets, some of them expounding things correctly and in consonance with the truth and their hearers' notions, and others going astray in certain matters.”

It results from it a triple origin of our knowledge of God, according to whether we draw it from our own stock, from poetry or from law; to this repertory of the sources of the idea of God, Dio Chrysostom proposes to add a fourth of it, taking into account what the consideration of the divine images due to the talent of the artists suggests in this field.

“Now that we have set before us three sources of man's design of the divine being, to wit, the innate, that derived from the poets, and that derived from the lawgivers, let us name as the fourth that derived from the plastic art and the work of skilled craftsmen who make statues and likenesses of the gods — I mean painters and sculptors and masons who work in stone, in a word, everyone who has held himself worthy to come forward as a portrayer of the divine nature through the use of art.”

Unlike Plutarch, Dio announces this theological tripartition is not the result of his personal invention, but that it is proposed to him by his precursors; his only originality would be to find it insufficient, and to associate a fourth source of theology to it, of an artistic nature. Is the tripartition Dio presents as a usual diagram that of Saevola and Varro? It is in every case related; it similarly claims to distribute theology according to its source, and insists clearly on this ratio diuisionis; two of its three classes have their counterpart in Latin tripartitions, which counted (popular or aristocratic) poets and lawgivers among the introducers of gods (Augustine spoke, in connection with Scaevola, of poeticum genus); as for the innate notion of God, it would tally without difficulty with the theology of the philosophers, which is more than any other the result of a very inner reflection. When it is well examined, the text by Dio mentions besides a double theological tripartition, worked out on two different levels: on the one hand,

118

as we have just seen it, the notion of God can be innate, poetic or legal; on the other hand, these last two categories, considered as a unit, are indebted to reasons, stories and uses. It is remarkable that this last distribution reproduces that of Plutarch almost exactly; it would respond better still than the previous one to the Varronian distinction between the theology of philosophers, poets and peoples, and we would avoid with it the difficulty emerged from the fact the philosophical theology is not completely innate. In any event, whatever tripartition we choose to retain in Dio (and perhaps is it necessary to keep the one and the other), it presents an undeniable relationship with the division of Varro, while approaching more the terms even of that of Plutarch, what could not astonish us.

This tripartite theology levels still more at the beginning of the 4th book of the Preparation for the gospel by Eusebius of Caesarea. As of the end of book III; Eusebius reviews his development: he had finished with certain questions, others are still to approach; he reported a large number of myths suitable for the religion of Egyptians and Greeks; he showed, by criticizing them, the philosophical interpretations which the use of the allegorical method had made it possible to draw from them; he is now on the point of examining the pagan religious structures such as they are really practiced in the cities. According to him, the demons are the architects of the success of the myths and of their rational interpretation; do they play the same disastrous role in the theology of the cities?

“ The ministrants indeed of the oracles we must in plain truth declare to be evil daemons, playing both parts to deceive mankind, and at one time agreeing with the more fabulous suppositions concerning themselves, to deceive the common people, and at another time confirming the statements of the philosophers' jugglery in order to instigate them also and puff them up: so that in every way it is proved that they speak no truth at all. After having said so much, it is now time for us to pass on, and advance to the third kind of Greek theology, which they say is political and legal .”

It is not doubtful that this passage contains a clear allusion to the tripartite theology: it is a question there, in religious matter, of two devilish maneuvers to propagate the error, through the fables and the teaching of the philosophers; after what comes the very explicit mention of the third theology, known as political or legal. This text by Eusebius could bear the signature of Augustine, even that of Scaevola.

But the beginning of the book IV is more formal still. The Greeks introduce into their theology a triple division: the first is the mythical theology, that Eusebius would prefer to name “historical,” and that the poets invent at the whim of their imagination; then comes the physical or speculative theology, object of the research of the philosophers, who connect it to the previous one while presenting it as the result of an allegorical interpretation of myths; the third place belongs to the political theology, which has force of law in each city and is imposed rigorously in the name of the tradition.

Here how Eusebius expresses himself precisely “ For since they divide their whole system of theology under three general heads, the mythical treated by the poets in tragedy, and the physical which has been invented by the philosophers, and that which is enforced by the laws and observed in each city and country […..] namely the historical, which they call mythical, and that which has transcended the mythical, and which they call physical, or speculative, or by any other name they please [….] the third part, and this is what is established in the several cities and countries, and which they call political, or state religion […]

As to the first form then of their theology, being historical and mythical, let any of the poets arrange it as he will, and so let any of the philosophers deal with the second form, reported to us through the allegorical interpretation of the legends in a more physical sense: but since the third form, as being both ancient and politic, has been legally ordained by their rulers to be honored and observed, this, say they, let neither poet nor philosopher disturb; but let everyone, both in rural districts and in cities, continue to walk by the customs which have prevailed from old times, and obey the laws of his forefathers.”

None of the Greek texts quoted up to now on the tripartition of theology is richer than that of Eusebius, nor nearer to the talks by Scaevola and Varro. Like in Varro, the division does not take place only here between the gods or the various sources of their worship, but inside the “theology” itself. The adjectives characteristic of each group are the same ones on both sides; Augustine quoting Varro (well rather, we saw it, than some hypothetical “Greeks”) spoke about theologian mythicen, physicen, politicen; Eusebius restores the Greek adjectives, these very ones which were to be under the pen of Varro.

119

The authors of each one of these theologies did not vary: for Eusebius like for Scaevola, Varro, Plutarch and Dio Chrysostom, they are still the poets, the philosophers and the lawgivers; in the last category, the archons of Eusebius join the principes ciuitatis of Scaevola, just as his notation on the tragic poets tallies with the relation that Varro established between mythical theology and theater. It is therefore to be believed that, after Plutarch and Dio, but more clearly than they, Eusebius reports the theological tripartition in which Scaevola and Varro had been interested. The similarity of the words used on both sides led to even wonder whether the Preparation for the Gospel could not be one of the sources of the developments of Augustine on the tripartite theology of Varro, singularly if the “Greeks” of the City of God VI, 12 would not refer to the character of Eusebius.

To tell the truth, this last one is not an unknown for Augustine, who had read of him the ecclesiastical History in the translation by Rufinus and the Chronicle in the rehandling of Jerome. But the good rule in this field is to admit as used by Augustine only the Greek texts which he could reach in Latin translation; however we know no trace of such a translation of the Preparation for the Gospel; the only argument which we could put forward in favor of knowledge by Augustine of the Preparation is based on the utilizing , in the City of God, X, 11, of a passage of the Epistle to Anebo, from Porphyry, also reported in the Preparation, V, 10; but this argument even loses all impact since it is one admitted, as it should probably be done, that Augustine had in hand a Latin translation of this Porphyry’s opuscule, which obviously exempted him to have recourse to the hypothetical intermediary of Eusebius. Under these conditions, to return from there to the tripartite theology, it should be thought that the “Greeks” to which Augustine seems to refer do not indicate another source only than Varro himself using Greek words.

Not only the witness statement of Eusebius matches the indications of Plutarch and Dio, and, beyond that, the talks of Scaevola and Varro; it has still the interest to supplement them on some points.

He notes the arbitrary nature of the mythical theology, and even of the physical theology; but that of the city is inviolable and protected by laws, because of its seniority and to safeguard the continuity of the traditions.

Eusebius adds to his predecessors, interesting precise details of vocabulary, mythical theology is also known as “historical,” perhaps because of its concrete nature or of its claim to historicity; that of philosophers is called “speculative,” in consequence of the rational effort which it implements.

Like Augustine will do it, Eusebius ascribes physical theology to the intervention of misleading demons but he extends their role to that of poets. However its main contribution consists in connecting mythical theology to physical theology, by presenting this one as the result of the application to that one of allegorical interpretation; physical theology is not a gratuitous construction of the philosophers, but the result of their effort in order to save the theology of the poets (and also that of the city) by a rational exegesis of myths and worships; it is undoubtedly the reason why it can be said “speculative,” even though the mythical theology, without exegesis and left to its only literal meaning, would have a “historical” look; this design of the theology of philosophers as constituted by a trial of interpretation of both others is developed by Varro, and Augustine will make it a food of his polemic .

We may therefore take for granted these four Greek witness statements relate to the tripartite theology with which Scaevola and Varro dealt. The question arises now of knowing if they depend on the talks even of the two Roman theologists. Such a filiation would be possible chronologically, since oldest among them, Aetius, is largely later to Varro; moreover, the author of divine Antiquities is well known by Plutarch, which quotes him several times in his Quaestiones Romanae; a passage of the Life of Numa, 8, would even show that Plutarch knew the developments of Varroabout the Roman religion originally without anthropomorphic representations of the gods; it could therefore happen that, just like Plutarch, Aetius, Dio and Eusebius had communication of the ideas of Varro about the division of theology, and that they were inspired by them. But this view of the things, theoretically possible, is unlikely to be well founded, and for several reasons.

On the one hand, the Greek texts which have just been quoted, although covering the same subject obviously, do not reproduce the doctrines of Varro such as Augustine reports it with an overall fidelity that cannot be questioned; sometimes they add something to it, such Dio who introduces the non-varronian distinction of nature versus nurture, such still Eusebius who innovates as regards technical vocabulary; more often they omit essential Varronian elements; thus the compared estimation of each of three theologies, which constituted the content of the talk of Varro, is overlooked; the judgment by

120

Eusebius of the mythical and physical theologies could not indeed be a trace of it, so much it is far from covering it, and proceeds from a specifically Christian value judgment. On the other hand, Aetius and the others do not indicate any Roman origin of the tripartition; quite the reverse, Eusebius assigns a Greek source categorically to it.

As the fact remains that it is well the same tripartition in question on a side and on another, the assumption is imposed of a common Greek source to which, on the one hand, Scaevola and Varro would be indebted, on the other hand, Aetius, Plutarch, Dio Chrysostom and Eusebius, either that the last three get directly to this source, or that they are linked to it through Aetius.

The tripartite theology of Varro would therefore proceed from a Greek source. To tell the truth, various clues enabled it to foresee in the Christian accounts relative to this author. When Tertullian declares that he chooses as a target the classification of Varro because it has the advantage of recapitulating all former classifications, isn't that Varronian tripartition continues a tradition that Scaevola could not constitute alone? Perhaps Tertullian, if he clearly mentions the existence of predecessors of Varro, does not state that they are Greeks. But this precision is provided by Augustine when he affirms that at least two of three theologies were, in Varro, designated by Greek adjectives, and we saw that the “Greek” theologists given in the City of God as partisans of tripartition were probably reduced to Varro speaking Greek language or calling upon Greek authorities.

We see well starting from what general topics the tripartite theology could appear in Greece. Two distinctions at least, very widespread, could give it rise.

Initially the opposition between physis and nomos, classical at least since the Sophists; in the Gorgias by Plato, Callicles reproaches Socrates for calling upon sophisms of platforms by saying that generally “ Nature and Law are opposed”; transported in the religious field, this antithesis easily results in the distinction between “physical” theology and “legal” theology, which do not always go hand in hand. Another opposition familiar to the Greeks was that of Truth and Opinion; in addition to the place it occupies in the thought of Plato, this distinction explains a whole exegetical tendency among the critics of Homer: the Cynic Antisthenes, imitated and accentuated by the Stoic Zeno, maintained that the Homeric poems were sometimes written according to the opinion, sometimes according to the truth, i.e., they were to be understood sometimes as pure stories, sometimes as the indication of a hidden theoretical teaching, of an essentially physical nature. According to whether they allow one or another interpretation, the lines by Homer therefore were considered , either as simply narrative or “mythical,” or as full with a major scientific meaning, i.e., as “physical”; and one of the arguments of the Christian criticism, to discredit the Homeric theology, will be to show that it remains vain in a case as in the other ; if the stories by Homer relating to the gods are “mythical,” for example the apologist Aristides will say, they are not other things only words; but if they are “physical,” they cease concerning the gods. We understand thus how, introduced into religious matter, the old distinction of doxa and aletheia could generate the separation of the “mythical” theology and of the “physical” theology; if we add the potentialities of the opposition physis-nomos to it, we are here about in possession of the theological tripartition of Varro.

This last remark has the advantage of indicating in which more precise direction it is advisable to seek the Greek sources of the Varronian tripartition.

Because the application to Homer’s theology of the antithesis Doxa-Aletheia is characteristic of stoicism. However, if it is true that this antithesis can be considered theoretically as the base of the distinction between mythical theology and physical theology, it is on the Stoic side it would be necessary to seek the origin of very whole tripartition. This direction of research is confirmed by several clues. One of them lies in the sympathy of Varro to stoic philosophy: it is in its name, we saw it, that, while borrowing from Scaevola the principle even of the tripartition, he defends against him the physical theology, is in favor of the human origin of the deified heroes, and banishes from true religion according to him [we say well, “according to him”] the anthropomorphic representations of gods.

Another clue is more categorical in favor of the stoic source of three theologies: when Varro, according to the witness statement of Tertullian, quotes a tripartition of gods which reminds extremely his own, the author of it is the Stoic Dionysius, teacher of Posidonius. And Aetius does not go in a different direction when he mentions the tripartite theology, as we saw it, in a context explicitly Stoic. Not more

121

Plutarch, which calls upon same tripartition in support of a praise of Love of which he borrows several materials from Stoicism.

A last piece of evidence , more indirect, of the Stoic origin of tripartition can be required from a passage of the 1st book of the De natura deorum of Cicero; the academician Cotta criticizes there the Epicurean theology which has just been defended by Velleius, and according to which gods have a human figure (humanas esse formas deorum); to fight this design, Cotta borrows arguments, not from his master Carneades, but from the Stoic doctrines which, we saw it, rejected any anthropomorphic representation of gods; his conclusion is, of course, not Stoic, but infiltrated with atheism: “ If, then, as I have shown, God does not possess a human aspect, nor, as you are convinced, any aspect of the kind just mentioned, what makes you hesitate to deny the existence of the gods? ” ; but the reasoning through which he comes to the first premise of this conclusion carries the mark of the Porch. However, in the development of this reasoning, Cotta is led to introduce distinctions which remind these of the tripartite theology; here how he explains that people could come from there to worship anthropomorphic images of gods:

“ Was there ever any one at all who looked upon the world with so blind an eye as not to see that these human figures of yours were attributed to the gods either designedly by wise men (consilio quodam sapientium) in order that they might the more easily wean uninstructed minds from a degraded mode of life to the worship of the gods, or else in consequence of a superstitious desire for images, in paying homage to which men might believe that they were approaching the gods themselves? This same tendency, moreover, has been increased by the poets, painters, and workers in art, for it was not easy, in imitating other forms, to preserve the appearance of action and effort on the part of the gods” ; under these conditions, we understand that, “ from our childhood we have known Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Vulcan, Apollo, and the other gods, under the aspect which painters and sculptors have laid down for us, and so with regard to their insignia, and age, and attire .”

It is not necessary to force these texts to see that the wise men who founded the worship of the divine images as a means of touching the masses closed to a more spiritual religion are related to the founders of the political theology; in the same way the poets who, like the other artists, support the superstition and the error by representing the gods as men battling with life, by ascribing to them a concrete and individualized outline are well the promoters of the mythical theology. But, Cotta continues, the images of the gods will not be deceptive for the true philosopher: “ Are you not ashamed, then, as a man of science, that is, an explorer and pursuer of nature (physicum, id is speculatorem uenatoremque naturae) to seek a testimony to truth in minds imbued with habits? ”; he should understand on the contrary that, through a law of nature, no animal conceives perfect beauty out of its own species, and that this is why man represents the gods in his image “ And if in the same way nature has enjoined (si natura praescripsit ) upon man that he should think nothing more beautiful than man, is it at all strange that this feeling should be the cause of our thinking the gods to be like men?” You will not have failed to recognize, in these “physicists” .....some druids who seek and distinguish the “nature” of the things, without being stopped by the habits neither by the myths, the indication of the followers of physical theology, who subject their gods neither to the fables of the poets, nor to the requirements of the city.

Lucan, Pharsalia, book I : “ To you alone it is given the gods and celestial powers to know or not to know; great trees of remote groves are your dwelling place, etc. ”

There would be thus, in these some pages by Cicero making Cotta discoursing, a mention disguised, but perceptible, of the three divisions of theology; but Cotta, in his effort to strip the gods of every anthropomorphic distortion, expresses less the position of the new Academy than that of the Porch; several of his expressions (but not his last conclusion, skeptic and atheist) could have been signed by Zeno or Chrysippus, such as this one: “ And what, Velleius, if your assumption that, when we think of God, the only form that suggests itself to us, is that of a man, is itself wholly false ?”; and the fact that a reminder of the tripartite theology is introduced thanks to such a development make us think it is interdependent of it, and Stoic like it. This last argument alone would be insufficient; but, added to the others, it strongly establishes that Scaevola and Varro owe their tripartition to Stoic philosophy.

But is it possible to specify this Stoic origin, to designate it by a name, or at least to assign one time to it? It was believed, it was spoken about the Middle Stoicism and quoted the character of Panetius. Briefly let us examine the pieces of evidence that are produced, in support of this attribution. It is

122

initially the presence, in the first book of the De Republica by Cicero, of a new allusion to the tripartition of theology; Scipio and Laelius, discussing the best form of the authority in the State, seek the origin of the unanimous belief in Jupiter king of gods and men; Scipio distinguishes a triple source of it: either it has be established by statesmen (a principibus rerumpublicarum) who considered it to be useful for life (ad utilitatem uitae), and wanted to suggest by the way that monarchy is the best political regime; or it constitutes a fabulous history (fabularum similia) and erroneous, spread by ignoramuses; or finally it emanates from universally famous scientists (communes doctores) to whom a thorough study of the nature of all things (natura omnium rerum peruestiganda) taught that an intellect controls the universe. It is probable that these lines contain a reference to the tripartite theology of the Stoics; however, the authority of Panetius is often called upon by Cicero throughout the 1st book of the De Republica; by bringing closer these two observations, we can conclude that tripartition itself had as a promoter Panetius.

Other clues lead rather towards Posidonius, moreover a contemporary and pupil of Panetius; because Posidonius would be at the origin of the third allusion to the tripartite theology we can discover under the pen of Cicero. It is still the 1st book of the De Natura Deorum, but this time the argumentation of the Epicurean Velleius; having just expounded the physical theology of Chrysippus and the artifices, he uses to find it among most ancient poets, Velleius declares that they are not there philosophical judgments , but delirious dreams (non philosophorum iudicia, sed delirantium somnia), as absurd as the stories of the poets endowed with treacherous softness, as the wonders of the magi and as the shallow opinions of the crowd; always according to Velleius, very differently well founded would be the assertion of Epicurus that nature even (ipsa natura) printed in all the minds the notion of gods that, through his nature (omnium natura), every man recognizes their existence; such would be the origin of the belief in gods, and not in an institution, in a habit nor in a law (non instituto aliquo aut more aut lege).

We easily recognize in this text a veiled resort to theological tripartition: it is the mythical theology of the poets of which Velleius rejects the nonsense in the Stoics; the attitude he exalts in Epicurus, and which consists in being based on the study of nature,matches the physical theology of philosophers; finally, when he denies the institutional or legal origin of the belief in gods, it is the political theology of the city that he dismisses. But, it is said, this passage from Cicero reflects the teaching of Posidonius, to whom consequently would be due to the working out of the tripartition of theology and the transmitting it to Varro. This derivation of detail would be besides only a precise example of a more general dependence, through which Varro, for the whole of his theology, would be dependent on Posidonius; such is the conclusion which was drawn from the observation of a certain number of doctrinal resemblances between the fragments of Varro and the De Natura Deorum by Cicero, who would have made large quotations, especially visible in the first part of the book II, from the tract by Posidonius on the subject.

Not only Varro should be indebted to Posidonius for knowing the fact even, of the tripartition but he would have still borrowed from him his views on the communication which is established between three theologies thus distinguished.

We saw indeed that, unlike Scaevola who placed insuperable partitions between the civil theology (the dominant theology) and the two others, Varro assigns an intermediate situation to it which enables it to make the most of the benefits of the fabulous theology and of the natural theology. However, a similar idea is observed in the Stoic plea by Balbus in the 2nd book of the De Natura Deorum: the theology that Balbus considers as true is the physical theology, which grants to the stars the divine nature; but he admits the validity of another design, reported to the Greeks sages and to former Romans, according to which the divine dignity is attributed to humbler products of nature, but extremely useful, and even to men who were social benefactors: “ But there are many other divinities to which on account of their great services a status and a name have been given, not without reason, both by the wisest men of Greece and by our own ancestors”; in the same way, “ The life and common practice of mankind have admitted of their exalting to the realms above, as the recipients of fame and gratitude, individuals who have excelled in well-doing”; it is seen that these old practices, ratifying habits and recognized by legislative measures, enter civil theology (dominant theology); this one

123

would thus result from physical theology, through an extension to the natural products and to the great men of the divine nature, until then reserved to the stars for their beneficial part.

The same physical theology, Balbus continues, gives rise to another transformation, when it gives rise , under the pen of the poets, to a multitude of anthropomorphic gods on whom superstition is fed: “ There is, too, another method, and one, moreover, based upon natural science, from which a great number of gods have resulted, the clothing of whom in mortal form has supplied poets with stories, but has saturated human life with every kind of superstition”; it is precisely the physical origin of these myths which makes it possible to the exegesis to find there, in spite of their immorality, an authentic teaching, and that mythology is a daughter of physics: “ Do you see, then, how from the right and useful discovery of natural phenomena a passage was made in thought to imaginary and fictitious deities?—a passage which gave rise to false beliefs, and frantic errors, and superstitions worthy almost of a beldame.”

Balbus understands by the way that the fabulous theology of the poets results from the physical theology, that it is an adulteration of it suitable to flatter the popular taste for the supernatural, but that it remains there, disguised, a valid design of gods; this shift from physical to mythical constitutes a particular case of corrupting perversion besides that the Stoics observed in the whole Mankind.

To tell the truth, these views of Balbus do not cover exactly these of Varro about the reciprocal influence of the various theologies; one and the other admit that physical theology emerges in (dominant) civil theology; but Varro does not say, as Balbus does, that fabulous theology is indebted to the physical theology; and Balbus does not say more, as Varro does, that it inspires civil theology. The fact remains that they agree, not only on the existence of three theologies (that Balbus does not name, but distinguishes clearly), but on the fact of their interaction. Cicero, it is said to us, would have built the speech of Balbus using materials provided by Posidonius, new piece of evidence that this one would have worked out at the same time the division of the three theologies and the theory of their mutual relation.

A last argument in favor of the Posidonian origin of the tripartition may be drawn from the witness statement of which we announced the presence in the Placita by Aetius; Diels indeed showed that this relatively recent doxographic collection drew from the Vetusta placita gathered by a disciple of Posidonius; consequently the tripartition that Aetius seems to add to the list of achievements of not specified Stoics could emanate well from Posidonius himself. Is this to say that the application of Panetius is definitively dismissed by the authors of this paternity suit? He keps in his favor the fact that Scaevola played a part of intermediary in the progress of the tripartition to Varro, even if this one did not follow it entirely; however, we know that Panetius enjoyed a great authority in the circle of Cicero and of his friend the pontiff Scaevola, who is even sometimes shown as the disciple of Panetius; it would be a reason to think that the tripartite theology, of which historically first express mention is met in Scaevola, is a creation of Panetius. The duality Panetius-Posidonius takes on besides a poor importance; the main thing is to retain that, according to a whole school of historians, the tripartition of the theology would be a result of the Middle Stoicism.

In reality , if it seems granted that the various texts by Cicero which have just been quoted (and many others) bear the marks of the tripartition of the theology, it is impossible to ascribe with certainty the substance of it to the teaching of Posidonius or Panetius; the fact that such Ciceronian dialog quotes several times their name does not make it possible to conclude that they inspire a page of it where they are not mentioned. The assertion of a general influence of Posidonius on the theology by Varro is itself questionable, and the training of the author of the divine Antiquities comes well more under the Middle Platonism of Xenocrates and Antiochus of Ascalon. We can possibly admit that tripartition, in its precise expression, was arranged by the Middle Stoicism; but it should be recognized that, in this case, Panetius and Posidonius made only to develop an older distinction; because the very content of the tripartite theology, namely the confrontation of physical theology and of mythical theology, and the recovery of this one by that one, goes back much earlier. As of its origin, with Theagenes and Metrodorus, the allegorical interpretation of the poets endeavored to discover, under the bark of the myth, a profound physical teaching, which had resulted in the poetic fantasy of the bards or of the aoidoi and could be found again behind it; to this allegorical exegesis of myths corresponds an allegory, parallel to the religious practices, which appear as the dramatized expression of a message of a theoretical nature.

124

But who does not see this double allegorical interpretation, accentuated and generalized by the first Stoics, is at the base of the distinction between the physical theology and the mythical and political theologies, as of the effort to save these by attaching them to that one? Varro did not go to a lot of trouble to redeem the theology of the poets; but, in his application to keep the theology of the city by presenting it as the popular emanation of the theology of the philosophers, he joins, not the Middle, but at the least the Early Stoicism. From this point of view, theological tripartition does not go back only to Panetius and Posidonius, but at the very least to Zeno and Chrysippus. Scaevola and Varro preserve nevertheless some originality, not in the invention of the tripartition, but in its handling and its use; because the classical Stoics, in their distinction of the three theologies, limited themselves to a simple objective observation and took care not to introduce a hierarchical order there; especially, they abstained from any judgment of the civil (dominant ) and mythical theologies, that allegorical interpretation saved from discredit; Scaevola and Varro engage on the contrary in a compared appraisal of various theologies; they favor one the civil theology (the dominant theology), the other the physical theology, they both discredit the theology of poets; in the process, they use Stoic tripartition for purposes that no Stoic, was it the eclectic Panetius, would not have been able to ratify.

! -------------- -------------------- ------------------------ !

When the wise points at the moon with his finger the French journalist ..... looks at the finger. Once again we saw it well at the time of the affair known as of “halal” occurred during the election campaign of the 2012 presidential election we will thus summarize for our readers.

T = 0: journalists show in a report that most of the animals for slaughter are slaughtered by following the Muslim rite, contrary to the legislative measures on the animal suffering, a portion of the meat thus produced being found thereafter in the “normal” circuit s without knowing of the consumer since all the parts of the animal may not be consumed by a pious Muslim. With the result the non-Muslims literally eat the not kept by the pious Muslims leftovers.

T= O, 1: no reaction or almost, a report among so many others.

T= 1: a politician or more exactly a political woman, located let us say among hardest republicans, takes again the subject.

T= 2: general outcry,public outcry, the economic persons in charge contradict this situation, the political officials contradict this situation, the journalists (to my knowledge I did not see at the time dissenting opinion) contradict the situation. And therefore all call the political woman in question at the least a she-liar, even a woman inciting hatred etc.etc.

It is a general inveighing against the donkey.

T= 3: certain journalists begin to admit that the real situation in the field is not that official denials put forward but that the political woman in question nevertheless is wrong for such or such reason, and therefore remains a she liar inciting to hatred, etc.

T= 4: certain journalists admit that the situation is well about such as that denounced initially but underline well that they do not see where the problem is and that the political woman in question is wrong of being concerned with problems which concern only the “living together.”

T= 5: certain journalists focus on the situation (non-compliance with the laws about animal suffering, lack of transparency in the meat distribution systems, etc.) the political officials of the country announce that they will accelerate the lawful and legislative control of the halal ritual slaughter.

First of the “journalists” of the time therefore, Tertullian.

The first text where the tripartite theology by Varro is mentioned by name , it is the beginning of the 2nd book of the lampoon by Tertullian Ad Nationes, written in 197, here: “ I have taken and abridged , Tertullian says, the works of Varro; for he in his treatise Concerning Divine Things, collected out of ancient digests, has shown himself a serviceable guide for us.

Now, if I inquire of him who were the subtle inventors of the gods, he points to either the philosophers, the peoples, or the poets. For he has made a threefold distinction (triplici genere) in classifying the gods: one being the physical (physicum) class, of which the philosophers treat; another the mythic (mythicum) class , which is the constant burden of the poets; the third, the national (gentile) class,

125

which the nations have adopted each one for itself. When, therefore, the philosophers have ingeniously composed their physical theology out of t heir own conjectures, when the poets have drawn their mythical theology from fables, and the nations have forged their national theology according to their own will, where in the world must truth be placed?”

Answer. Truth dear Tertullian, is in the three categories at the same time because it transcends them, truth my dear Tertullian, is, of course, out there, and not in your hatred of all that exists.

What learns to us this text by Tertullian, of which the bad state besides required several conjectural restorations, and of which the translation is not necessarily facilitated? Initially, that the Christian apologist uses the doctrines of Varro for polemical purposes, at the beginning of a development devoted to the attack of the pagan theology, and of which program is defined de deis uestris [...] congredi; here is what is not likely to guarantee the objectivity of the account.

We read then that the classification of Varro is not original, since he recapitulated the former theological distinctions, and that it is precisely the reason why Tertullian chooses him as an opponent.

This classification seems to relate to a double object: on the one hand, it distinguishes three species among those who have given credence to gods, insinuatores deorum, and they are the philosophers, the poets and the nations; in addition, it divides the gods themselves, deorum censum, in three classes which correspond to these their introducers, namely the physical gods, the mythical gods, the national gods.

Lastly, these three kinds of gods are presented by Tertullian as mutually exclusive alternatives, and between which it is necessary to choose, since Tertullian, in his last sentence, asks where is the truth. Whereas truth, dear Tertullian, to parody a famous televised series, it is out there.

Second of the journalists of the time: Saint Augustine.

Otherwise richer and clearer than the account of Tertullian are indeed the information that Augustine too, dispenses, by name, on the tripartite theology of Varro in the books IV, VI and VIII of the City of God. Not besides that the problem of the objectivity of the Christian author disappeared, because Augustine, just like Tertullian, unearths the ideas of Varro in a polemical intention, and it is not always easy to distinguish if such passage of the City reports accurately one of the criticisms that Varro himself expressed to certain forms of the Roman religion, or if it is mingled in it an attack that Augustine would have added on his own initiative. What is sure, it is that Augustine left a double description of the tripartite theology, according to whether he reports it to Varro alone, or, according to Varro himself, he makes it go back earlier than him, and ascribes it to the pontiff Scaevola.

The Book IV of the City of God reforms the idea that we could have of the tripartite theology of Varro according to Tertullian and the talk on Scaevola: we want to speak about the relations that the three theologies have between them. To tell the truth, these relations were non-existent according to Tertullian and in Scaevola; this one rejected irrevocably the theology of the poets and that of the philosophers in favor of the only theology of the cities, which was therefore in nothing indebted to them; for that one, we remember it, the three theologies of Varro were mutually exclusive, and we were to restrict ourselves to choose one of them. The situation appears now very different: the three theologies are presented as interdependent, and it is the civil (dominant) theology which establishes the link between the two others of which it takes part; the theology of the poets is alone too little enlightening to regularize the behavior, but it takes advantage, especially in the eyes of the people, of a power of seduction that nothing replaces; in addition, the theology of the philosophers is right to inspire virtues, but its access is difficult to the mass; consequently, to be at the same time respectable and effective, the civil theology or dominant theology will have to borrow the seriousness of the one and the charm of the other, with, however, a preference for that of the philosophers, because of its moral utility: “ In short, when the fore-mentioned author attempted to distinguish the civil theology from the fabulous and natural, as a sort of third and distinct kind, he wished it to be understood to be rather tempered by both than separated from either. For he says that those things which the poets write are less than the people ought to follow, while what the philosophers say is more than it is expedient for the people to pry into. Which, says he, differ in such a way, that nevertheless not a few things from both of them have been taken to the account of the civil (or dominant) theology;

126

wherefore we will indicate what the civil theology has in common with that of the poet, though it ought to be more closely connected with the theology of philosophers. Civil theology is therefore not quite disconnected from that of the poets. Nevertheless, in another place, concerning the generations of the gods, he says that the people are more inclined toward the poets than toward the physical theologists […..] He said that the latter had written for the sake of utility, but the poets for the sake of amusement .”

This design of the junction of the theology of the poets and that of the philosophers to build civil (therefore dominant) theology naturally determines the judgment that Varro makes about each one of them. Nothing remains in him of the summary execution that Scaevola inflicted to the first two, not more of the unconditional approval he awarded to the third. Undoubtedly is the fabulous theology still criticized without consideration, and blamed for ignoring the divine nature as to betray the honor of the gods:

"In it are many fictions, which are contrary to the dignity and nature of the immortals [….] in a word, in this all manner of things are attributed to the gods, such as may befall, not merely any man, but even the most contemptible man.When, Augustine adds, he of course, where he could, where he dared, where he thought he could do it with impunity, has manifested, without any of the haziness of ambiguity, how great injury was done to the nature of the gods by lying fables.”

On the other hand, it is the natural theology of the philosophers, condemned by Scaevola, which obtains the preference of Varro; it is for him the only true one, which develops at leisure the nature of gods, their place, their relationship with time; difficult questions, which require the calm of the school and do not adapt themselves to the hubbub of the public arenas.

The admiration of Varro is accompanied with only one reservation, caused by the spectacle of the controversies between philosophers and the diversity of the tendencies:

"The second kind which I have explained, he says, is that concerning which philosophers have left many books, in which they treat such questions as these: what gods there are, where they are, of what kind and character they are, since what time they have existed, or if they have existed from eternity [….] and other such things, which men's ears can more easily hear inside the walls of a school than outside in the Forum. He finds fault, Augustine continues, with nothing in this kind of theology which they call ‘physical,’ and which belongs to philosophers, except that he has related their controversies among themselves, through which there has arisen a multitude of dissentient sects.”

As we could expect it, this subscription of Varro to the philosophical theology saves him from the double criticism that Scaevola addressed to this way of designing the gods. Scaevola, we remember, rejected the Stoic doctrines which assigns to heroes a human origin; Varro has no reason to follow him in this way; in fact, as already Tertullian reports it, he admits that heroes, if not gods, were formerly men; he approves, as we saw it, the opinion of the Stoic Dionysius, for whom one of the three divine categories (themselves close to the Varronian tripartition) grouped the deified men, such Hercules and Amphiaraus. Much more, the reason which, it seems, especially contributed to diverting Scaevola from admitting the human origin of heroes, namely the fear that this precedent encourages the contemporaries to aspire to deification, frights no longer Varro; not only he subscribes to the heroization of the famous men of the past, but he concedes that, today still, the prospect for the deification, even illusory, can cause, in the enthusiast of glory hearts, a beneficial ambition: “He maintains it is useful for states that brave men believe, though falsely, that they are descended from the gods; for that thus the human spirit, cherishing the belief of its divine descent, will both more boldly venture into great enterprises, and will carry them out more energetically, and will therefore by its very confidence secure more abundant success .”

Varro does not take more responsibility as for the second criticism that Scaevola objected to the theology of the philosophers, namely that it ruined the credit of the venerable divine images; he considers, according to the Stoic prospect, that the purest religion is that which, such as the primitive Roman religion [and such as the even more primitive druidic religion we could add], does without

127

anthropomorphic statues. He blames those who inopportunely established the use of the sacred figures or having been mistaken on the nature of the gods and for having sapped their prestige:

“He says, also, that the ancient Romans, for more than a hundred and seventy years, worshipped the gods without an image. And if this custom, he says, could have remained till now, the gods would have been more purely worshipped. And he does hesitate to conclude that passage by saying of those who first consecrated images for the people that they have both taken away religious fear from their fellow citizens, and increased error, wisely thinking that the gods easily fall into contempt when exhibited under the stolidity of images [….] He thinks that the rites of religion would have been more purely observed without images” [We will see that druidic religion was more moderate and was in no way iconoclast but admitted all the artistic attempts in this field].

Is it necessary to see, in the beginning of this last text, an argument for the “aniconism” of the oldest religion? It does not seem; because this account by Varro has against it almost the unanimity of the Latin writers, as many examples would show it; in reality, more than the historical testimony to an objective fact, it seems as an ideal rebuilding of the past that Varro calls upon in support of his Stoic convictions.

But the example of Scaevola had shown that it is difficult to serve at the same time the theology of the philosophers and that of the city. The pontiff overcame the problem by sacrificing the first one summarily. How Varro, more moderated, will be able to reconcile his philosophy and his attachment to the religion of Rome? The divorce between natural theology and civil (dominant) theology could not fail to appear in him in a rather dramatic way. His personal aspiration inclines him towards a purified theology, in which the only God is the soul of the world and, if he had to build himself the religion of the city, it is in this direction that he would do it; as much to say that he would wish it different from what it is actually; but, a good citizen, he believes himself required to give in civil theology or dominant theology such as it exists indeed and to prescribe the observance of it:

“ When in many passages he is exhorting, like a religious man, to the worship of the gods, does he not in doing so admit that he does not in his own judgment believe those things which he relates that the Roman state has instituted; so that he does not hesitate to affirm that if he were founding a new state, he could enumerate the gods and their names better by the rule of nature? But being born into a nation already ancient, he says that he finds himself bound to accept the traditional names and surnames of the gods, and the histories connected with them.”

On this subject, Augustine reports the same remarks of Scaevola, such at least that he read them in Varro: “ These, he says, that Hercules, Æsculapius, Castor and Pollux, are not gods; for it is declared by learned men that these were but men, and yielded to the common lot of mortals. What else? That states do not have the true images of the gods; because the true God has neither sex, nor age, nor definite corporeal members."

It is easy to imagine the advantage that Augustine could draw, for his polemic, from this dissension between the inner attitude and the civic fidelity of this enlightened and sincere pagan, and his satisfaction to record that Varro, just like Scaevola, comes to the conclusion it is necessary to leave the people in the ignorance of the poor value of its religion: “In another passage, Varro had openly said, in speaking of religious rites, that many things are true which it is not only not useful for the common people to know, but that it is expedient that the people should think otherwise, even though falsely.”

Augustine therefore adds there treacherously (and in a gratuitous way: because nothing proves that the pontiff inwardly adhered to this double theory of the philosophical theologists; he could extremely well consider it as false, and nevertheless, fearing his seduction in the eyes of the people, want to let it be unaware of it) a charge of Machiavellism and insincerity against Scaevola: “ The pontiff is not willing that the people should know these things; for he does not think they are false. He thinks it expedient, therefore, that states should be deceived in matters of religion.”

Since he believes to have proven Varro’s duplicity, Augustine looks out for his more innocent declarations in order to take him at fault, and it is here that it becomes difficult to disentangle true criticisms expressed by the first one to the civil (dominant) theology of his fellow citizens, from the

128

amplifying and tendentious interpretation of the second one. When Varro declares innocently that the philosophical problems are easier to solve between the walls of a school than on the Forum, Augustine translates: he hides to the people the theology he takes for true. It sounds like a current journalist seeking to fight or defend such or such policy.

Augustine must admit that Varro never expresses explicit reservation against civil (dominant) theology, that he requires every citizen to know it and to live it: “ Let us look at this civil theology of his. The third kind, says he, is that which citizens in cities, and especially the priests, ought to know and to administer. From it is to be known what god each one may suitably worship, what sacred rites and sacrifices each one may suitably perform .”

But the whole of his doctrines, especially his admiration for natural theology and his distrust as for fabulous theology, could involve implicitly, in spite of his patriotism, unfavorable consequences for the dominant civil theology; undoubtedly he does not express them, but Augustine deduces them with skill, thanks to a double reasoning. On the one hand, when Varro grants his absolute approval to natural theology, and nevertheless keeps its distinction from civil theology, doesn't he see that he condemns this one? Indeed, either the second one is true, and it merges then with the first; or it is distinct from it, and consequently false: “ I see, indeed, why it should be distinguished as fabulous, even because it is false, because it is base, because it is unworthy. But to wish to distinguish the natural from the civil or dominant, what else is that but to confess that the civil or dominant itself is false? For if that be natural, what fault has it that it should be excluded? And if this which is called civil be not natural, what merit has it that it should be admitted? ” On the other hand, Varro assigns to each of the three theologies the location of its exercise: “ The first theology is especially adapted to the theater, the second to the world, the third to the city”; he awards, of course, the palm to the natural theology: it refers to the world, and, still in Stoic philosophy, nothing is more excellent than the world; however the city is not always interdependent of the world, nor consequently civil theology inseparable from natural theology; on the other hand, the theater cannot cut itself from the city which instituted it, nor the fabulous theology from the dominant civil theology; but Varro severely judged that one; how then, Augustine concludes, could he spare this one, which forms a unit with it? We feel sophism leveling in several moments of this double demonstration; the fact remains that, to suppose even that Augustine had extremely exaggerated their incompatibility, the conciliation that Varro endeavored between the theology of the philosophers and the religion of the city was not easily tenable.

Did know Augustine the developments his compatriot Tertullian had devoted to expound the tripartite theology of Varro? Undoubtedly; because book VII of the City of God quotes by name an anti-varronian joke from the Ad nationes: “I do not say what Tertullian said, perhaps more wittily than truly, If gods are selected like onions, of course, the rest is rejected as bad."

In any case, we could note that the information furnished by Augustine, even if he sometimes distorted it of necessity, is incomparably richer than that of his predecessor; in the very translation of the technical Greek words of Varro, he takes a care and cultivates a conscientiousness from which we can forecast that he omitted nothing essential in the account of the doctrines. It is necessary lastly to be grateful to him to have thought of expounding the real Varronian tripartition and that of Scaevola separately; this valuable initiative enabled us to understand how, in the presence of a same form of thought, the attitude of two theologists could be almost diametrically opposite.

According to Jean Pepin (French Philosopher and Theologist, 1924 - 2005).

* We call “laertian” from the name of the famous Greek philosopher having spoken of it the first, the civil (dominant) theology when it is not too negative, when it is not too much imposed.

129

APPENDIX No. 5.

POSITION OF THE TRUE DRUIDS WITH RESPECT TO MYTHOLOGY.

We had the opportunity on several occasions to see the seriousness and the coherence of the druidic thought, without hiatus between cosmogony, philosophy, metaphysics, ethics and religion. This makes them appear to us besides as particularly modern in this respect, in any case, much more than the majority of their former emulators. We could almost say them “ spiritualistic rationalists “since, as we have just seen it, these two qualifiers are not in reality antinomic.

The question which is posed then is this one: how these advanced philosophers did see the plethoric Celtic mythology and its pleroma of celestial gods or chthonian demons, peaceful gods or wrathful gods our Tibetan friends would say?

- First of all, it is obvious that they could not “take it literally “. They were too advanced for that. The Hellenistic contemporaries of the druids, held them for men comparable with Greek philosophers, and in any case not outdone compared with those.

This means that, like the aforementioned philosophers, they were rather agnostic with respect to this whole army of deities venerated by the Celtic or Celtized peoples; some clues like the “cognoscere aut ignorare “of Lucan prove it.

The ancient druids in certain cases probably carried out some regroupings of deities under the same name. Example the Lugoves become Lug. They could not literally take this good thousand of god-or-demons and half god-or-demons that the research on theonyms delivers to us, and even less some of the incredible adventures of their legends.

- But it is not less obvious than without them [the druids] this mythological corpus would not have continued as much: its oral transmission was the doing of the veledae, a minor order, but forming part nevertheless of the druidic brotherhood. If the high-level druids had been rigorously against any mythology, it would be finally extinct, or at the very least would have been reduced to some scattered bits.

Celtic mythologies reached us only because the veledae, members of the Order druidic, kept its memory until their transcription (obviously sabotaged) by the medieval learned men. Such an oral transmission could not have been made inside the Order if the druids themselves had made opposition to such a process. Therefore, they were not against. Some celtologists and archeologists go even further and think that the druids directly influenced the evolutionary development of this mythology as we saw it.

In fact, there is a paradox only for us. To understand former druids, we must leave them within their reference framework, that of Celtic antiquity: in other words, try to put us in their shoes.

They would not have been “druids “if they had believed anything , swallowed, or taken literally, in a way very little reflected and very little philosophical. But they would not have been Celts if they had rejected completely or been unaware of the Celtic traditions, and for example had scorned the poetic power of them.

The short study we have just outlined show on the contrary that they have not lost interest in this Celtic popular mythology and that they gave it many “little helps“ in order to make it a coherent whole.

It is at least what archeology and dissection of the texts show. Mythology of the Indo-European priests and of the Neolithic Shamans was taken into account and was improved for didactic purposes, initially by the veledae, assistants of the druids, then by the druids druids themselves. The ancient druids, very far from neglecting popular mythology, directed it and drew from it many didactic elements.

In the Greek texts for pupils of 8th or of 9th grade, we find many times the sentence “o muthos dèloi oti… “(the myth shows that…) always introducing a philosophical comment of an Aesop’s fable or of a myth used as a parable….Greek practice, but the druids also undoubtedly sometimes acted in the same way.

An indirect example of the use of mythology appears in the famous parable of “Lucan “: the explanation given by a druid in connection with the image of Ogmius (Heracles 1 to 6).

A little in disorder, by combing the books of Piggott, Sharkey, De Vries, Sjoestedt, d’Arbois de Jubainville, Le Roux & Guyonvarc'h… we perceive in the references made to such or such point of mythology, that the druids had there a source of parables.

In particular in the following fields:

130

- Rules of ethics centered on honor and generosity.

- Human Psychology: illustration of cases of human relations, because the mythological deities have quite a few typically human faults. With the possibility of a distinction between male psychology and female psychology. See the multiple mythological anecdotes on the subject, while starting with the story of the adultery of the wife of Partholon.

- Ideas on the Next World (or the Other Worlds), the permeation of the worlds and the diversity of the space-time equations: various myths of the visits in (hellish or not) Next Worlds and of the returns in this one.

- Humanization and putting in perspective of the god-or-demons who are only secondary causations or assistant forces of the Fate. The defeats inflicted by human peoples to the tribes of god-or-demons. Like in the battle of the plain of the mounds or the battle for the possession of the Talantio/Tailtiu in the Irish legends (symbolized by the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Rosemartha, on the Continent).

To have allowed the account of it, instead of prohibiting it off sacrilege, shows well that the druids, intellectual guides of the Celts, attached no historical value to it (it was only meta-history); symbolism only being interesting to bring to discuss still more the potential of superhumanization of the human being; making him capable of comparing himself with embodied god-or-demons. Through a knock-on effect also opening of discussion about relativism.

- Possible super-humanization of Man: mythological cases where such hero (or heroin) behaves equal footing with such or such deity. See the overabundant epic of the archetypal hero who is the hesus Cuchulainn.

They were there the two faces of a, however, one and homogeneous thought. For the druids of formerly, as we could see it, the soul or anamone had several potentials to develop or, if you prefer, several tools to improve, through his mind or menman.

- The reasoning, the rationalist reason, delivering rational one.

- But also the transcendent immanent spirituality, developed by methods refined from original shamanism (what we could now call sophrology), in other words, a spirituality open to metapsychics.

For the ancient druids, these two potentials were complementary and not at all antinomic: from their combined implementation resulted a mental synergy.

Altogether, this notion of complementarity of seemingly antinomic concepts, was similar to that of the calendar of Coligny, which was LUNISOLAR, do not forget it.

What obstructs our contemporaries, to admit this aspect paradoxical for them of the druidic thought, it is the mental programming resulting from our current civilization. In other words, the tendency of rationalism to scorn the spiritual one and conversely, the tendency of spiritualism to regard itself as somewhere higher to the scientific rationalism. Monism and relativism were the two main threads of the druidic thought, as we saw it. Consequently, all is explained very easily. We sufficiently enlarged in the previous chapters on the theological reasoning of the druidism and the moderate options of its Schools as for the Celtic “god-or-demons “. In this booklet, it will be therefore especially question of the attitude of the druids with respect to the mythology as speech assigning a role to these entities who are Epona Belin/Belen/Belenos/Manannan, Taran/Toran/Tuireann, Hornunnos, etc.

It’s while following the walking one that we find the way.

Development of ancient Celtic mythology. Here are the broad outlines.

1. The heritage of the Neolithic populations. The data of the prehistorians make it possible to foresee it, and the religious comparative literature makes it possible to identify it.

2. Indo-European Pool, identifiable by many analogies and also a certain number of theonyms, rising of a common “Aryan “ origin, in the broadest sense of the term. Way opened by Dumezil.

3. Local legends, tangled up with the naturalist beliefs , showing many similarities, and therefore indicating the same mental attitude.

4. Changing into myths of protohistoric facts, at the same time as its opposite, the deification of the great heroes (euhemerism). The Celtic people changed into myths the History and changed into history their myths. It is therefore vain to seek at all costs real facts behind each mythological episode, but conversely, it is quite as arbitrary to believe that Celtic mythology could remain preserved of any historical influence. Two related phenomena were the chronological inversion and the anachronistic insertion. These intrusions of History in Myth are obvious in the insular Celtic literature, as well Irish as Welsh, even if these have their source in the oral traditions of a former common huge mythology.

131

5. Integration of the deification of allegories, through personalization and hodgepodge with entities ascribable to former beliefs. The continuous mixing of these various cultural substrates and superstrata, produced frightening tangles. It also involved downgrading in the hierarchical ladder of the deities or conversely the increase in power of others, replacing them little by little.

6. Another phenomenon was the continual addition of “supernatural “by the bards who told all that. Lastly, at the time of the late writing down in Ireland, there were many deletions or many interpolations , either biblical, or Graeco-Latin, in order to establish the link with other traditions that the Celtic tradition. At one time when the druids druids were no longer there to take care of the maintenance of the cultural identity *. These are these last distortions that it was essential to locate then to eliminate to manage to reconstitute the authentic ancient corpus.

After having examined in detail the various options of druidism with respect to the successive cultural beliefs, melted in a well-recorded mental community; we can now affirm that the two engines of this implementation were the druids and the Celtic language. Itself controlled or maintained in all its cohesion, by the druids.

As we could see it, the druidism is come out from the polytheism resulting from these various ethnocultural superpositions, it even enhanced it, thanks to its own dialectics, based on monism and relativism.

This religious relativism is one of the fundamental keys of the druidism. This very wealthy – almost pantheist –polytheism, indeed seemed everywhere present in the ancient Celtic-speaking community “admodum dedita religionibus “, according to the remark of Caesar (B.G. VI, XVI). The latter was based at the same time on observations and readings (descriptions made by the Greek travelers also advisers of his contemporaries Diodorus and Timagenes). This polytheism was then fleshed out by a huge mythology where the fantastic imagination of the bards had given free rein to themselves. As we could also note it, many things were often written about this mythology, generally until the Middle Ages and the Arthurian cycle. Come at this point, it will be difficult to the non-celtologist reader to distinguish the antique from most recent. By the light of the interceltic comparative literature, while also implementing the interface between the contribution of ancient archeology, on the one hand, and the contents to retain of the transcriptions of oral traditions in the medieval Celtic literature, on the other hand; and while taking advantage, moreover, of the etymological analysis of a considerable onomastic mass, it was possible to deliver some new.

* The last druids in activity in Ireland in the kingdom of Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill (10h century) were undoubtedly already Christian nevertheless. They were Christian but a little in the way of the wizards or magi of the Middle Ages, in the way of Nostradamus, continued to practice some ancestral rites at the request of their customers (imbas forosnai, teinm loida, dichetal C chennaib according to Errard Mac Coisé).

132

APPENDIX No. 6.

GENERAL OVERVIEW ABOUT THE DRUIDIC PLEROMA

( PANTH-EON).

Contrary to what certain neo-Druids of today affirm, turning towards the deities divinities virotutis, anextiomarus, iovantucarus, dunatis, toutatis contrebis etc... in short helping or soothing or even psychopompous, is well part of Druidism.

They are the personifications of all the positive altruistic, aesthetic and peaceful, human feelings contained in the heart. They can manifest in our dimension, which may surprise if we are not prepared for it.

Using one of their images as an aid to meditation or focusing is also part of Druidism and it can help you to die, therefore to live. This is popular druidism par excellence. The soldier's last refuge crushed in a trench.

The Callaic or "Lucanian" schools of Druidism [Lucan. Book I. 452.To you alone it is given the gods and celestial powers to know or not to know. Strabo. Book III Chapter IV, 16. Some say the Galicians have no god, but the Celtiberians and their neighbors on the north offer sacrifices to a nameless god at the seasons of the full moon, by night, in front of the doors of their houses, and whole households dance in chorus and keep it up all night] do not make them so much some deities external to human beings but rather some personifications of the intrinsic or pre-natural qualities of the human being favoring a happy reincarnation in the hereafter.

A Celtic equivalent of Buddhism must therefore, out of compassion, include worships of dulia or hyperdulia centered on different deities in the foundations of its philosophy. The opposite would be a useless iconoclasm.

Just as the original Buddhism was able to find in the local deities before him an acceptable place and a useful role in its practice at popular and daily level (the ancient god of death Mara symbolizes for example temptation and became there an evil spirit, the goddess Tara a she Bodhisattva, etc..) the important thing remains to reject philosophically speaking the myth of the personal god all powerful creator and supposed to be eternal, which is effectively incompatible with our philosophical triangle whose three extremes are atheism agnosticism and pantheism (AAP ).

God “died “ but before his “death “ he wanted we have all the assets in hand, to well and honorably get out the great pilgrimage through the Manifestation of cosmic life. It is to these distant origins, where the meaning and the impact of the myths are concealed, the honest historian of the religions, tries to go back today.

The one who, today, would start suddenly to speak about fairies, hidden close to a spring, or about trees which speak, would be immediately led to a lunatic asylum.

What separates us today from the ancient druids, what makes their behavior incomprehensible to us, what makes them appear to us as backwards , in childhood, it is their vision ambicatus i.e. “straddle the two worlds “ ours and the other.

What it is necessary to also understand well, it is that certain states of consciousness were formerly much more current than now.

Don’t rush into calling the ancient druids barbarians or primitive. Sleep binges, of a caused or maintained with narcotics sleep, as well as the psychoanalysis of their dreams, had no longer secrets for them, and for a long time, when Caesar comes to “civilize “ them.

Who wants to feel what the druidic myths druidic meant really and understand the admirable teaching of the Schools of thought of the time of the Celtica Litavia (of the free and independent Great Celtica) in the fulness of their message; has to put oneself in the shoes of the ancient druids, and to learn how to know their frames of mind, their aspirations, their enthusiasms.

Those some people call, quite wrongly, “Magi of the Barbarians “were men who approached much more than we could currently do it, the divine Man (Theios aner). Because many still had very developed senses ( the in a way animal gifts, of Man) and for them the invisible worlds were a reality. The loss of this sixth sense (the loss of the preternatural) characterizes in fact, the abyss which

133

separates us from all these alleged “Barbarians “. If we deny the reality of the elementals today ( of the spirits of nature like the god-or-demons trees or rocks…) it is because we can no longer see them at work. But the Barbarians of Antiquity too, felt the presence of them, and spoke about them. Any action, the quivering of a branch, the fall of a leaf, the movement of clouds indeed can be a message from Fate or Tokad. Studying and then interpreting these messages (labarum) was the great business of the former druids.

And that lasted until Joan of Arc. Unless, of course, it is the case to say, to see here only a manifestation of tinnitus as in the case of Abraham.

The ancient druids believed in the god-or-demons of nature (elementals, genies, spirits), because they heard voices where, for us, everything is simply background noise of nature (that of a spring for example, or the rustle of the wind in the leaves). The men of this time, indeed, did not need to go to the catechism, because they lived in the daytime and at night in contact with the “god-or-demons “. Fear or love of the gods thus went without saying for them.

The Celts of the time of Ambicatus lived so to speak on one level with the god-or-demons, and they did not need the self-interested pseudo-revelation of a hubristic or dominating and conquering people, to believe in them. The druids had not awaited for Caesar and the Roman syncretism with its procession of “deus, sanctus or sacrus “.

The spirits of nature were tangible and perceptible, and nobody would have ventured to deny them, except to be considered for a madman (nowadays it is exactly the opposite and here what separates us from former druids).

The druidic spiritual Science, popularized or illustrated by its mythology, makes us leave the world of the effects to go back to that of the causes producing these effects. The Celtic Panth-eon or Pleroma (Albiobitus + Anderoduno) , taken over by the druids, makes us understand the descent of the creating forces in the material world, and their return to the primary source progressively, according to evolution. Unity becomes multiplicity, God or the Demiurge is overextended in the matter, his “members “disperse to the four winds. The anguiped wyverns called Andernas on the Continent, Fomorians in Ireland work the obscure nebula of the “pre-creation “ because there is not really an ex nihilo creation, but an organization of chaos under the impulse of the divine forces.

Ancient druids were scientists in their manner, the readers will realize that, and they will be able to then note that Celtic myths and Panth-eon or Pleroma, are not the naive work of still in childhood Mankind.

Druidic myths and Panth-eon or Pleroma, report and analyze the operations of cosmic forces (the gigantic anguiped wyverns or the god-or-demons) in nature and life (Bitos). It is a transposition of the immortal divinity in the temporal one, they therefore reflect the cosmic order, and show the creating principles of universal dynamics or convergence, in action.

Divine forces hidden behind the manifestations of the life, forces necessary to the maintenance of the life in the visible and invisible Universe (Bitos)… whatever the name we give them (mythical kings, god-or-demons, angels, Elohim, etc.) these forces have the task to condense the spiritual level, to materialize it. Then new phases of the evolution occur. The divine forces are more and more integrated in nature and in mankind and at this point in time god-or-demons start to be felt no longer in the same way. The Man who loses sight of this process of the evolution of civilizations and mentalities, who does not follow this descent of the creating forces closely, recognize them no longer. From where consequently appearance of new names (and from where also the importance of the communication of the true divine names in final teaching).

Much insane would be the one who would want to assign a perfect chronological order to all these myths, in a world in perpetual gestation, where the divine forces get mixed up in a fantastic ballet; where the successive emanations from the Most High , from the God or Demiurge man does not name, go down in a cascading way to cause or procreate this world. What Hindus call vyuha and Muslims shirk (but in order to condemn it). It was out of the question for the ancient druids to worship following the example of the higher Being man does not name (like the El Elyon of the Bible) the storm, the lightning, the rivers, the forests, the rocks… Ancient druids saw in these phenomena “only forces “ but they personified them to speak about them because storms lightning, flash, trees and water, remain nevertheless, for those who know, the earthly symbol of an immense cosmic reality. These inexorable cosmic laws (Tokay) were well understood by druids of the time.

There is, of course, a great part of popular imagination in these myths, but everything there nevertheless is well in its place, weighed, measured, calculated. It is the fall in the matter of the spirit,

134

and this, to the maximal density, and then its slow increase through the superhumanization of our species, the whole ultimately having to return to its primary source.

As the poet said it, the last human race, the one which will belong almost to another species that ours, the one which will see the Spirit-Man blossom. The one who will be able to handle the Fire Principle and who will join the great flame of the Father, the one who gave life to all others.

The Celtic myth, like any image, is living, no bounds can limit it in time. This is why the basic myth lives a certain time, then evolves according to the wisdom of the men who use it for precise didactic purposes (the druids).

Each god-or-demon, although representative of the initial impulse, is designed in order to adapt as well as possible to the background for which he is made. It should be noticed for example that they are often the “last-born children “of the god-or-demons (Lug ousting Noadatus/Nuada for example) who have to play the first parts: they are more advanced.

Moreover, there is during these evolutions many additions coming to be attached to the primitive myths. Additions most of the time perfectly justified besides; except obviously for the attachment to biblical or Graeco-Latin data at the time of the Middle Ages.

The myths cannot remain static, it is necessary that they evolve or follow the evolution, step by step. I t is not a question, however, of distortion , but simply of enrichment, according to progress of the society (or then they are true upheavals, due to external causes, like in the case of the famous Welsh triads, of the Barddas which are only one fraud).

What was true in the time of the primordial druids, remains true, even many centuries later, but on this truth “trunk “ come to be grafted many branches having also their interest. Here all! From where the impossibility of precisely superimposing the Celtic god-or-demons and those of the primitive Indo-European world. The Celtic “time “is not the Indo-European “time “. Many centuries separate them and during this time the life, and therefore its way of view it, did not cease developing. Details were added here and there and the versions diverged although remaining all equally true.

Ancient druidism did not have the aggressive intransigence which then the monolatrous religions had. Man respected the god-or-demons of others, even honored them too; man assimilated them, because he knew it was the same “results of the verb to be “conceived differently, and that these foreign concepts too contained extremely interesting things, sometimes.

What also complicates the things, it is that in the Celticum (Empire) of Ambicatus, each tribe, each country, adapted the myth according to its own genius (to rule oneself was also one of the lessons of ancient druidism).

The many variants had all a similar framework, the same goal, and the same aim, as we will see it.

No contradiction in all this. Let us understand a thing well: the god-or-demons cannot die. They exist by a continuous life, they change and are called differently until the moment when, behind new masks Man recognizes the ancient concepts he had believed to disavow. Just as the evolution becomes more meticulous, changes the face of the world, and that it transforms the men, myths evolve to complexity.

At the time of Ambicatus existed already a certain number of variants of the theogonic, cosmogonic, ethical, and lastly “redeemer “ myths, illustrated by the action of legendary heroes. When that is understood, it then becomes easy to thwart the multiple traps abounding in these myths. For example, the shift of the facts through time, the multiple names of the same force in several characters, the fictional fights and routes, the work of the god-or-demons in this world, for the future evolution, etc.

Here what the great characteristics of Celtic mythology are in its druidic version, its laws in a way.

- Polarity law.

The Universe or Bitos was built on the opposition of two forces which balanced reciprocally: soul and matter, fire and water, male and female, sun and moon, and so on.

– Law of coincidence of opposites. There exists a point of view of the mind, from where life and death, reality and imagination, past as well as future, transmissible one and incommunicable one, top and bottom, cease being perceived contradictorily. Here what we can understand from the lunisolar calendar of Coligny which is typical of the thought of the druids.

135

AFTERWORD IN THE WAY OF JOHN TOLAND.

Pseudo-druids with fabulous initiatory derivation (the famous and indescribable or hilarious perennial tradition) having multiplied since some time; it appeared us necessary to put at the disposal of each and everyone, these few notes, hastily written, one evening of November, in order to give our readers the desire to know more about true druidism.

This work claims to be honest but in no way neutral. It was given itself for an aim to defend or clear the cluto (fame) of this admirable ancient religion.

Nothing replaces personal meditation, including about obscure or incomprehensible lays strewing these books, and which have been inserted intentionally, in order to force you to reflect, to find your own way. These books are not dogmas to be followed blindly and literally. As you know, we must beware as it was the plague, of the letter. The letter kills, only spirit vivifies.

Nothing replaces either personal experience, and it’s by following the way that we find the way. Therefore rely only on your own strength in this Search for the Grail. What matters is the attitude to be adopted in life and not the details of the dogma. Druidism is less important than druidiaction (John-P. MARTIN).

These few leaves scribbled in a hurry are nevertheless in no way THE BOOKS TO READ ON THIS MATTER, they are only a faint gleam of them.

The only druidic library worthy of the name is not in fact composed of only 12 (or 27) books, but of several hundred books.

The few booklets forming this mini-library are not themselves an increase of knowledge on the subject, and are only some handbooks intended for the schoolchildren of druidism.

These simplified summaries intended for the elementary courses of druidism will be replaced by courses of a somewhat higher level, for those who really want to study it in a more relevant way.

This small library is consequently a first attempt to adapt (intended for young adults) the various reflections about the druidic knowledge and truth, to which the last results of the new secularism, positive and open-minded, worldwide, being established, have led.

Unlike Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which swarm, concerning the higher Being, with childish anthropomorphism taken literally (fundamentalism known as integrism in the Catholic world); our druidism too, on the other hand, will use only very little of them, and will stick in this field, to the absolute minimum.

But in order to talk about God or the Devil we shall be quite also obliged to use a basic language, and therefore a more or less important amount of this anthropomorphism. Or then it would be necessary to completely give up discussing it.

This first shelf of our future library consecrated to the subject, aims to show precisely the harmonious authenticity of the neo-druidic will and knowledge. To show at which point its current major theses have deep roots because the reflection about Mythologies, it’s our Bible to us. The adaptations of this brief talk required by the differences of culture, age, spiritual maturity, social status, etc. will be to do with the concerned druids (veledae and others?)

Note, however. Important! What these few notes, hastily thrown on paper during a too short life, are not (higgledy-piggledy).

A divine revelation. A (still also divine) law. A (non-religious or secular) law. A (scientific) law. A dogma. An order.

What I search most to share is a state of mind, nothing more. As our old master had very well said one day : "OUR CIVILIZATION HAS NO CHOICE: IT WILL BE CELTISM OR IT WILL BE DEATH” (Peter Lance).

What these few notes, hastily thrown on paper during a too short life, are.

136

Some dream. An adventure. A journey. An escape. A revolt cry against the moral and physical ugliness of this society. An attempt to reach the universal by starting from the individual. A challenge. An obstacle fecund to overcome . An incentive to think. A guide for action. A map. A plan. A compass. A pole star or morning star up there in the mountain. A fire overnight in a glade?

What the man who had collected the core of this library, Peter DeLaCrau, is not.

- A god.

- A half god.

- A quarter of God.

- A saint.

- A philosopher (recognized, official, and authorized or licensed, as those who talk a lot in television. Except, of course, by taking the word in its original meaning, which is that of amateur searching wisdom and knowledge.

What he is: a man, and nothing of what is human therefore is unknown to him. Peter DeLaCrau has no superhuman or exceptional power. Nothing of what he said wrote or did could have timeless value. At the best he hopes that his extreme clearness about our society and its dominant ideology (see its official philosophers, its journalists, its mass media and the politically correct of its right-thinking people, at least about what is considered to be the main thing); as well his non-conformism, and his outspokenness, combined with a solid contrariness (which also earned to him for that matter a lot of troubles or affronts); can be useful.

The present small library for beginners “contains the dose of humanity required by the current state of civilization” (Henry Lizeray). However it’s only a gathering of materials waiting for the ad hoc architect or mason.

A whole series of booklets increasing our knowledge of these basic elements will be published soon. This different presentation of the druidic knowledge will preserve nevertheless the unity as well as the harmony which can exist between these various statements of the same philosophical and well-considered paganism : spirituality worthy of our day, spirituality for our days.

Case of translations into foreign languages (Spanish, German, Italian, Polish, etc.)

The misspellings, the grammatical mistakes, the inadequacies of style, as well as in the writing of the proper nouns perhaps and, of course, the Gallicisms due to forty years of life in France, may be corrected. Any other improvement of the text may also be brought if necessary (by adding, deleting, or changing, details); Peter DeLaCrau having always regretted not being able to reach perfection in this field.

But on condition that neither alteration nor betrayal, in a way or another, is brought to the thought of the author of this reasoned compilation. Every illustration without a caption can be changed. New illustrations can be brought.

But illustrations having a caption must be only improved (by the substitution of a good photograph to a bad sketch, for example?)

It goes without saying that the coordinator of this rapid and summary reasoned compilation , Peter DeLaCrau, does not maintain to have invented (or discovered) himself, all what is previous; that he does not claim in any way that it is the result of his personal researches (on the ground or in libraries).

What s previous is indeed essentially resulting from the excellent works or websites referenced in bibliography and whose direct consultation is strongly recommended.

We will never insist enough on our will not be the men of one book (the Book), but from at least twelve, like Ireland’s Fenians, for obvious reasons of open-mindedness, truth being our only religion.

Once again, let us repeat; the coordinator of the writing down of these few notes hastily thrown on paper, by no means claims to have spent his life in the dust of libraries; or in the field, in the mud of the rescue archaeology excavations; in order to unearth unpublished pieces of evidence about the past of Ireland (or of Wales or of East Indies or of China).

THEREFORE PETER DELACRAU DOES NOT WANT TO BE CONSIDERED, IN ANY WAY, AS THE AUTHOR OF THE FOREGOING TEXTS.

137

HE TRIES BY NO MEANS TO ASCRIBE HIMSELF THE CREDIT OF THEM. He is only the editor or the compiler of them. They are, for the most part, documents broadcast on the web, with a few exceptions.

ON THE OTHER HAND, HE DEMANDS ALL THEIR FAULTS AND ALL THEIR INSUFFICIENCIES.

Peter DeLaCrau claims only one thing, the mistakes, errors, or various imperfections, of this book. He alone is to be blamed in this case. But he trusts his contemporaries (human nature being what it is) for vigorously pointing out to him.

Note found by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau and inserted by them into this place.

I immediately confess in order to make the work of my judges easier that men like me were Christian in Rome under Nero, pagan in Jerusalem, sorcerers in Salem, English heretics, Irish Catholics, and today racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, person, while waiting to be tomorrow kufar or again Christian the beastliest antichrist of all the apocalypses, etc. In short as you will have understood it, I am for nothingness death disease suffering …… By respect for Mankind , in order to save time, and not to make it waste time, I will make easier the work of those who make absolutely a point of being on the right side of the fence while fighting (heroically of course) in order to save the world of my claws (my ideas or my inclinations, my tendencies).

To these courageous and implacable detractors, of whom the profundity of reflection worthy of that of a marquis of Vauvenargues equals only the extent of the general knowledge, worthy of Pico della Mirandola I say…

Now take a sheet of paper, a word processing if you prefer, put by order of importance 20 characteristics which seem to you most serious, most odious, most hateful, in the history of Mankind, since the prehistoric men and Nebuchadnezzar, according to you….AND CONSIDER THAT I AM THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF YOU BECAUSE I HAVE THEM ALL!

Scapegoats are always needed! A heretic in the Middle Ages, a witch in Salem in the 17th century, a racist in the 20th century, an alien lizard in the 21st century, I am the man you will like to hate in order to feel a better person (a smart and nice person).

I am, as you will and in the order of importance you want: an atheist, a satanist, a stupid person, with Down’s syndrome, brutish, homosexual, deviant, homophobic, communist, Nazi, sexist, a philatelist, a pathological liar, robber, smug, psychopath, a falsely modest monster of hubris, and what do I still know, it is up to you to see according to the current fashion.

Here, I cannot better do (in helping you to save the world).

[Unlike my despisers who are all good persons, the salt of the earth, i.e., young or modern and dynamic, courageous, positive, kind, intelligent, educated, or at least who know; showing much hindsight in their thoroughgoing meditation on the trends of History; and on the moral or ethical level: generous, altruistic, but poor of course (it is their only vice) because giving all to others; moreover deeply respectful of the will of God and of the Constitution …

As for me I am a stiff old reactionary, sheepish, disconnected from his time, paranoid, schizophrenic, incoherent, capricious, never satisfied, a villain, stupid, having never studied or at least being unaware of everything about the subject in question; accustomed to rash judgments based on prejudices without any reflection; selfish and wealthy; a fiend of the Devil, inherently Nazi-Bolshevist or Stalinist-Hitlerian. Hitlerian Trotskyist they said when I was young. In short a psychopathic murderer as soon as the breakfast… what enables me therefore to think what I want, my critics also besides, and to try to make everybody know it even no-one in particular].

Signed: the coordinator of the works, Peter DeLaCrau known as Hesunertus, a researcher in druidism.

A man to whom nothing human was foreign. An unemployed worker, post office worker, divorcee, homeless person, vagrant, taxpayer, citizen, and a cuckolded elector... In short one of the 9 billion human beings having been in transit aboard this spaceship therefore. Born on planet Earth, January 13, 1952.

138

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE BROAD OUTLINES.

As regards the bibliography of details see appendix of the last lesson because, as Henry Lizeray says it so well, traditions that must be interpreted. It is there the whole difference which exists between former druidism and neo-druidism.

Lebar Gabala or The Book of Invasions. Paris 1884 (William O'Dwyer)

Base of the druidic Church. The restored druidism. Henry Lizeray, Paris, 1885.

National traditions rediscovered. Paris 1892.

Aesus or the secret doctrines of the druids. Paris 1902.

Ogmius or Orpheus. Paris 1903.

CONTENTS.

Prolog Page 005

First part.

Reflections about mythology Page 007

Myth and allegory Page 009

Introduction to druidic mythology Page 013

Sources, methods, and problems Page 027

The problem of interpretations (to be made) Page 031

Interpretatio celtica or druidica Page 033

Interpretatio graeca Page 036

Interpretatio romana Page 038

Interpretatio christiana Page 039

The manuscripts of the grail Page 040

Second part.

Genealogies and childhood of the god-or-demons Page 044

Divine genealogies and ambivalence Page 046 Note about the public life of the god-or-demons at hyperborean times Page 048

On the death of gods Page 049

Note about the occultation of the god-or-demons and their return Page 054

The syzygies or associations of god-or-demons Page 055

The primordial trinitarianism Page 062

Divine syncretisms Page 063

Third part.

Short history of druidic ideas Page 065

Prehistory of the druidism and therefore of the Celtic neo-paganism Page 069

Panceltic and Metaphysical gods or demons Page 071

Peter Lance and the Celtic messianism Page 073

Universalism and implantation in druidism Page 085

Individual opinion of the druid Jean-Pierre Martin about druidic mythology Page 096

The art of the counter-lay Page 103

APPENDICES

1. Reminder about the notion of metahistory Page 106

2. Historicization Page 110

139

3. Euhemerism Page 114

4. Typology of the Greco-Roman gods or demons Page 115

5. Position of the true druids with respect to mythology Page 129

6. General overview about the druidic pleroma Page 132

Afterword in the manner of John Toland Page 135

Bibliography of the broad outlines Page 138

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

1 Quotations from the ancient authors speaking about Celts or druids.

2. Various preliminary general information about Celts.

3. History of the pact with gods volume 1.

4. Druidism Bible: history of the pact with gods volume 2.

5. History of the peace with gods volume 3.

6. History of the peace with gods volume 4.

7. History of the peace with gods volume 5.

8. From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 1.

9. Irish apocryphal texts.

10. From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 2.

11. From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 3.

12. The hundred paths of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 1 (druidic mythology).

13. The hundred paths of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 2 (druidic mythology).

14. The hundred ways of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 3 (druidic mythology).

15. The Greater Camminus: elements of druidic theology: volume 1.

16. The Greater Camminus: elements of druidic theology: volume 2.

17. The druidic pleroma: angels jinns or demons volume 1.

18. The druidic pleroma angels jinns or demons volume 2

19. Mystagogy or sacred theater of ancients Celts.

20. Celtic poems.

21. The genius of the Celtic paganism volume 1.

22. The Roland’s complex .

23. At the base of the lantern of the dead.

24. The secrets of the old druid of the Menapian forest.

25. The genius of Celtic paganism volume 2 (liberty reciprocity simplicity).

26. Rhetoric : the treason of intellectuals.

27. Small dictionary of druidic theology volume 1.

28. From the ancient philosophers to the Irish druid.

29. Judaism Christianity and Islam: first part.

30. Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 1.

31. Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 2.

32. Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 3.

33. Third part volume 1: what is Islam? Short historical review of the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

34. Third part volume 2: What is Islam? First approaches to the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

35. Third part volume 3: What is Islam? The true 5 pillars of the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

36. Third part volume 4: What is Islam? Sounding the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

37. Couiro anmenion or small dictionary of druidic theology volume 2.

140

Peter DeLaCrau. Born on January 13rd, 1952, in St. Louis (Missouri) from a family of woodsmen or Canadian trappers who had left Prairie du Rocher (or Fort de Chartres in Illinois) in 1765. Peter DeLaCrau is thus born the same year as the Howard Hawks film entitled “the Big Sky”. Consequently father of French origin, mother of Irish origin: half Irish half French. Married to Mary-Helen ROBERTS on March 12th, 1988, in Paris-Aubervilliers (French department of Seine-Saint-Denis). Hence 3 children. John Wolf born May 11th, 1989. Alex born April 10th, 1990. Millicent born August 31st, 1993. Deceased on September 28th, 2012, in La Rochelle (France).

Peter DELACRAU is not a philosopher by profession, except taking this term in its original meaning of amateur searching wisdom and knowledge. And he is neither a god neither a demigod nor the messenger of any god or demigod (and of course not a messiah).

But he has become in a few years one of the most lucid and of the most critical observers of the French neo-druidic or neo-pagan world.

He was also some time assistant-treasurer of a rather traditionalist French druidic group of which he could get archives and texts or publications.

But his constant criticism both domestic and foreign French policy, and his political positions (on the end of his life he had become an admirer of Howard Zinn Paul Krugman Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore); had earned him moreover some vexations on behalf of the French authorities which did everything, including in his professional or private life, in the last years of his life, to silence him.

Peter DeLaCrau has apparently completely missed the return to the home country of his distant ancestors.

It is true unfortunately that France today is no longer the France of Louis XIV or of Lafayette or even of Napoleon (which has really been a great nation in those days).

Peter DeLaCrau having spent most of his life (the last one) in France, of which he became one of the best specialists,

even one of the rare thoroughgoing observers of the contemporary French society quite simply; his three children, John-Wolf, Alex and Millicent (of Cuers: French Riviera) pray his readers to excuse the countless misspellings or grammatical errors that pepper his writings. At the end of his life, Peter DeLaCrau mixed a little both languages (English but also French).

Those were therefore the notes found on the hard disk of the computer of our father, or in his papers.

Our father has of course left us a considerable work, nobody will say otherwise, but some of the words frequently coming from his pen, now and then are not always very clear. After many consultations between us, at any rate, above what we have been able to understand of them.

Signed: the three children of Peter DeLaCrau: John-Wolf, Alex and Millicent. Of Cuers.